Well, that was a very good getaway, considering it was a one-night. Got my gal a tablet, Motorola Xoom…and it’s a hit. The hotel did everything right, the food in the restaurant was completely awesome.

The only pall cast over the trip is a generalized trend I’m seeing unfold over a much, much broader timeframe. The wild Sonoma Coast is being overrun with hippies. We went zipping on out there, with my fine flabby torso all decked out in this tee shirt:

…which now, as is always the case, draws lots of positive comments and thumbs-up. Nevertheless, by the time we came back, I was thinking I should have packed the one that looks like this:

I can’t blame the establishments for this. The hippies in Berkeley and San Francisco have begun to imagine US 101 N as a closer version of Europe around the Mediterranean. They seem to be saying “Let’s spend the weekend pretending we’re in Milan.” From the point of view of the gift shops and restaurants and hotels, it’s a cash cow. So they’re starting to mutate.

Now, I do have my preferences on things, but I’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy. So what’s my beef with the hippies? I didn’t have any complaints when you saw them here & there…I didn’t even complain when you saw them all over the place. Hippies can be interesting people. No, my complaint is when you can’t get away from them. Let’s face it, since the sixties the hippie lifestyle has been one of cognitive dissonance. “We just want to be left alone to grow our vegetables & whatever, and do our own thing, man”…coupled up with…”change the world, one [insert name of incremental thing] at a time. Man.” They like having the props that come with wanting to do-your-own-thing — freedom lovers — but they aren’t wholly dedicated to that. In fact, not even in the slightest. All too often, they want to make other people do things their way, but not admit to it.

And this comes up during the periodic outings to the surf. I’ll sum it up in one single word: Food. Everything, lately, is Tuscan…or…a charming little bistro on the Champs-Élysées. And you know what that means: A big white plate, with a little piece of something tasty but non-nourishing in the middle and some kind of sauce drizzled over it in an elegant pattern…seventy bucks.

No, I’m not here for a cheeseburger. I can get that anywhere. But I’m not here just for the taste, either. This is an adventure for us, we’re going to want to get out of the car, walk long distances, maybe even climb in some places. We don’t want to have to stay in the car or sit in hot tubs, conserving energy to avoid getting that low-blood-sugar-headache feeling. And really, just speaking for myself, I’ve noticed when I start panicking over this…that’s when I get fat. It isn’t the actual eating, it’s the ordering double-size-just-in-case that makes me fat. Since I was raised in the old school mold of “clean your plate.”

So in the long run, the European smaller-portions thing doesn’t work for me. What seldom to never gets mentioned is that European portions-control is tailored around European physical activities; which, near as I can make out, consists of sitting at a tiny table on a tiny stool with a tiny teacup on a tiny plate, and bellyaching about Americans. Well, this American likes to spend some calories doing things.

I hasten to add that none of this culinary bitching applies to the restaurant in the above-linked hotel. When I say the food was awesome, I mean…just go. This chef knows his stuff.

We had a complete blast. This hotel has lots of give-a-damn in everything it does, and we wished we stayed longer. More on that below.

Back to the hippie-rant.

There are other irritants besides the menu overhauls taking place; these other things I consider to be minor, to the point of being marginal, because unlike the food, they do not affect me in any way. Except maybe for the bill. Aesthetic things which seem to absorb vast amounts of energy and effort, which are completely lost on me. Lots of customs imported from Europe. Our favorite place has become an eclectic mix of things from my ancestral homeland of Scandinavia with Sardinia and Sicily thrown into the mix, and the Native American architecture built into the structure that cannot be hastily removed.

And that’s what inspires this little screed. We do like to sit by the fire pit with the hippies, drinking wine with them and exchanging some life stories. That’s what the weekend or vacation is about, and hippie or not, by the time one is midway through one’s sixties one generally has something of interest to say. I might even go so far as to say, that’s what hippies are for. The “counterculture” does pay off in this setting. Sitting by a fire pit, swapping stories. Hippies have ’em. Although, it is clear, they have learned enough about decent civilized behavior over the years, to only speak in mixed company about a tiny morsel of what they really have to say.

But to take over the whole coastline — and that’s what has happened here — is a different thing. If the hippies can make it up to Timber Cove, which lies beyond thirteen miles of treacherous winding mountain highway even the goats fear to tread, that’s approaching a monopoly status. Hell, it’s all the way there. And that’s depressing. No point trying to drive any further trying to get away from ’em. The thirteen miles is the most formidable barrier there is.

So if we must share the place over the weekend, let go of the freakin’ menu, you hippies. Here’s this ocean, with all its treasures, we could throw something into it we’re so close. That’s why we’re here, right? And on your way up over the treacherous and intimidating mountain pass, you see lots of — what? That’s right. Cows.

Surf. Turf. So no, this Yankee doesn’t want to see a cheeseburger on the menu. You know what I want.

No lobster tails or tenderloin in Venice, Italy, or in Oslo, Norway? Well then, that’s something America does right. Like Dilbert said, “This is the part where you agree with me, and we both get on with our lives.” Or else, you go to Venice.

Which brings me to a sensible explanation, I thought, produced by my girlfriend while she was tolerating my bitching about the cuisine, punctuated by my plaintive wailing of “What the hell is going on lately?” Her theory: It’s that damn TSA poking and prodding and searching the baby’s diapers for terrorists’ weapons and explosives.

Flying is a royal pain in the ass. So instead of flying off to Athens, or Istanbul, let’s just point the Prius toward Shoreline Highway, up past the Russian River and make-believe.

I think that makes perfect sense. The timeline matches up perfectly. Before flying turned into a complete nightmare, this was more of a cowboy country. Fireplaces that burned real wood, hiking trails with real hills, dips and valleys. Corned beef hash, biscuits & gravy, pork chops & eggs, entire pages on the menu dedicated to just steaks.

The wine lists still boast proudly of the brands that come from the local valley, as opposed to France. I hope that never changes.

I’m doing a rather sloppy job of combining my hippie-rant with my glowing praise of Bodega Bay Lodge, so the reader may end up confused. So let’s bottom-line it. The logs are Duraflame, which is not real wood but it’s good enough. They smell great. The WiFi is good, can’t say enough for the food, the adorable woodland creatures are in abundance, the swimming pool seems to be in working order although we did not partake.

The service was top-notch.

But you can’t get away from the hippies.

Update: We had a discussion the next day about the gentleman who walked over to shake my hand over the “Worst President Ever” tee shirt. The interesting thing here was, the lady and gentleman were both extremely pointed in their own deliberations about why, exactly, they agreed with the sentiment about our current President. In fact, their own thoughts on this were more crystallized than ours, which is really saying something.

The thing that really stuck out to all four of us was the opacity. It is, as I’ve observed myself, something that closely resembles a borderline mental illness. This question, then that question, then some other question, they’re all resolved with some variant of “you should not be asking that and since you did, you are not the kind of person to which this White House owes any answer.” But never with any actual information. When every single question that comes up is met with that attitude…

…well, I don’t want to mix rants here. That was theirs. Incidentally, the husband wanted to make extra sure which President was being characterized as “worst” before shaking my hand, whether it was this one or the previous. But I get the distinct impression that if he found out it was an anti-Bush tee shirt, he’d still be shaking my hand. And the wife was lamenting that the best remedy for our nation’s current woes was something it would now never see: A President Hillary.

I think they either had a mixed-marriage, Matalin/Carville thing going on…or else they were both democrats.

I find that encouraging. The jokes have been made that Barack Obama is, when all’s said & done, uniting the country after all — both sides of the fence want to see Him out of there. This is just one example of that, and an unconfirmed one since I don’t really know if they were democrats…but then, we don’t need that much supporting evidence for this, the signs are out there. It’s something that would make me worry if it was my job to get Obama re-elected. And so we do see signs of promise.

It’s likely to be an interesting election year. I daresay, we’ve never had anyone in the White House as charismatic as Barack Obama. We’ve never had an incumbent with a base so intensely dedicated. We’ve never had a base display such an intensity of dedication without being able to explain why. On the other hand, it’s been seventy years since the President has managed to win re-election in an economy this crappy, with so little sign of turn-around.

It’ll be a nail-biter. One thing that makes me nervous is to look around and see the people who are becoming liberal democrats, without realizing they’re becoming liberal democrats. They’re on an “entrance ramp” to the moonbat highway and they don’t know it. Others, on the other hand, are not liberals and never will be. That means there must be a handy definition, perhaps yet to be fully codified, with regard to the ones who are teetering on the brink.

It seems, to me, to begin with a single word, “should.” And the opposing force is provided by another single word, “how.” There are all these situations that “should” not exist in our real world existence, but do; and there are these other situations that cannot be found anywhere…but “should.” We should not have invaded Iraq, these moderates-who-are-becoming-liberal-democrats tell us with such certainty, such passion, such conviction. Now, at first blush, how do you go about not invading Iraq seems a pretty simple proposition, doesn’t it? Easier than falling off a log. Just don’t do it. But as they ritually and monotonously go about morphing this “should”-ness into an ever-so-popular visceral white hot hatred against you-know-who, they forget the backstory. It isn’t ignorance, in fact it is something they have lived through personally. In fact, the backstory has a lot to do with why the hatred burns so brightly. It is the hatred the Londoners felt against Titus Oates before he was sentenced to be lashed in the town square every now and then, whenever someone got it in their heads to go at it again, permanently. It is the hatred the nation felt against Susan Smith who drowned her sons in the car, and then made up a story about some black guy doing it…which people, then, fell for. It is the hatred felt only by the guy who feels like he got snookered. People who didn’t get snookered, don’t feel this hatred. So how would we have gone about not invading Iraq? Those with a working, functional long-term memory know there is no easy answer to this question; in fact, even knowing what we know today, invading Iraq was not necessarily wrong, at all. That’s why we aren’t unanimous on this.

There are other “shoulds” offset by other “hows.” A lot of them have to do with money. To the lazy thinker, when you say “these people should be paid more than seven-seventy-five an hour,” the only deliberation that may ensue after that, is whether…well, whether they should or shouldn’t. Any opposition to this, therefore, is gutterballed into a straw-man argument that goes something like “no, nobody should make more than that” even when nobody in proximity is saying anything remotely close to such a thing. If they bothered to listen to the opposition, they’d find the opposition is more likely to be presenting a “how.” The so-called moderate, but compassionate, who more often than not fancies himself to be the deeper thinker, is so consumed with one side of the equation that he neglects the other: The money must come from somewhere, right? There are only so many possibilities: the management will willingly come up with the extra money; the management will be required to come up with the extra money; a new program will be started to provide the extra money. We can safely exclude the first of those, since if management willingly came up with the extra money, the so-called “worker” would already be getting it and we would not be having the conversation. The other two options have to do with forcing someone, therefore depriving someone of an option, so could we inspect that please?

But the answer is no, because people overly enamored with “should” tend to change the subject when the question turns to “how.” That’s just the way people are.

I see other people are on their way to becoming post-modern liberals without realizing it, because they are simply continuing a life-long response to peer pressure. They do not think this is what is happening to them, because they are not necessarily obsessed, like high school sophomores, with wearing the latest fashions. So they think they are on the outside of this. Many, in fact, are quite insistent that they are “strong-willed,” “thinking for themselves,” teaching their kids to do the same, et cetera, et cetera…

The problem is, though, even though they may not be swayed by what a measured majority may think, they still define “a great point” according to whether it has reached plurality. So if they hear an opinion, they don’t put too much thought into whether it might be valid until they hear someone else say “that’s a great point” then tney might take it a little more seriously. They have the fortitude and the backbone to help push that boulder up to the top of the mountain, then; to add their voices to the chorus until such time as it has reached the fifty-percent mark and reached true majority status. And if that fails, they consider it to have been a noble effort, just like any true rugged individualist.

But they don’t have what it takes to be the guy who says “that’s a great point” — the number two. And they fall well, far, short of what it takes to be the guy who made the point, the number one. To them, if they don’t see that moved-and-seconded sequence, then it is absolutely impossible for any worthy point to have been made.

Henry Fonda could go in to a jury room with eleven of these people…and not have a single prayer of turning things around. It wouldn’t happen. These people are succumbing to peer pressure and they don’t know it, because they aren’t evaluating the ideas and the arguments according to content. Until the motion has been seconded, it isn’t worth considering.

I see another class of person getting suckered into becoming a hardcore lefty without realizing this is what is happening to him. Or her. Actually, it tends to more often be a “her” although it is lopsided in that direction only slightly. My home state of California, at this time, looks to be the first of the fifty states to go bankrupt, because of this kind of thought process. A policy is debated, in advance of a potential enactment of a policy not yet existing, or repeal of a policy already on the books. The debate comes down to whether a defined class of people should receive some special entitlement…and they decide it emotionally. Think of the example up above about hiking the minimum wage. This is slightly different. A litany is soon spewed out about “those people have to…” and then you get to hear about some fuzzy narrative. Nurses have to clean up bodily fluids, cops have to pull people over and maybe get shot, firemen have to charge in to burning buildings. And the prison guards, let’s not forget the prison guards.

I see no point inserting the ritual disclaimers about how wonderful I think nurses/cops/firemen/guards are, because my beef is not with the conclusion reached in these exchanges. My beef is with how it is decided. The virtue of this defined class…is speechified…waxed-lyrically-about. And presto! No need to have any further discussion about it. But this is not the way mature adults decide what to do.

It works the other way too. Oil companies and their evil profits. I know you’ve heard that one a few times lately. We have all this “pain at the pump” and unfortunately, everybody who drives a car to work has a good claim on the smallest-violin, just like cops and nurses and firemen and prison guards. All of us who buy gas have a “how would you like to” story to share, if only there was someone we could share it with who didn’t also have to pay $4.65 a gallon. To a rational thinker, a reasonable question emerges — and remains unanswered. How do we get from there…the price of gas is higher than we would like it to be…to over here, which is more congressional investigations (which never find anything), more regulation, more oversight, and would someone please come up with a scheme to take the profits away. You know the old joke about the South Park Underpants Gnomes with the one, two, three.

This is very much like that:

1. Diminish profits derived from anything that has to do with getting gas on the market;
2. ???
3. Cheaper gas prices!

When is the last time —

No, scratch that. Can anyone name for me a single commodity that came down in price, as a direct result of our efforts to make it more expensive, onerous and difficult to bring that commodity to market.

You see, in none of the above cases is it a very exotic or intricate or involved test of practical thinking these democrats-in-training have failed. They are actually very rudimentary thresholds. I would expect any sixth-grader, who has shown the responsibility, drive, initiative and capacity for independent living to walk home from school and be a latch-key kid, to pass these thresholds.

But of course, once you’re a grown-up you become entitled to conveniences. As are kids. But grown-ups get to decide which conveniences they like, and continue consuming them indefinitely. And what are conveniences, other than vacations from the necessity of personally making things happen, getting your hands dirty? And so adults are availed of the luxury of “bowing out” of the exchange, with everything except their wallets, thus gradually forgetting how things come to be. Beef comes from the store. Corn comes from a can. Water comes from a bottle. Clothes come from Amazon.

Therefore, we are all susceptible to this sloppy, democrat-entrance-ramp thinking. It doesn’t have much to do with intelligence. A lot of very smart people slip into this. They get a “should” in their heads that excites them, forgetting about the “how”; they believe no idea is worth thinking unless it’s moved-and-seconded; and they think privileges and punishments should be decided and set-aside only according to how good or bad some class of people can be perceived to be.

Barack Obama has a good chance for a second term, actually. That isn’t to say it won’t be a tough fight for Him. But I would say most of the people voting for the democrat in the 2012 election, as of today they don’t know yet that they’re democrats. But their thinking is just as diseased.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Amazing and Awesome.

Mike Rowe’s Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
May 11, 2011

Chairman Rockefeller, Ranking Member Hutchison and members of this committee, my name is Mike Rowe, and I want to thank you all very much for the opportunity to testify before you today.

I’m here today because of my grandfather.

His name was Carl Knobel, and he made his living in Baltimore as a master electrician. He was also a plumber, a mechanic, a mason, and a carpenter. Everyone knew him as a jack-of-all-trades. I knew him as a magician.

For most of his life, my grandfather woke up clean and came home dirty. In between, he accomplished things that were nothing short of miraculous. Some days he might re-shingle a roof. Or rebuild a motor. Or maybe run electricity out to our barn. He helped build the church I went to as a kid, and the farmhouse my brothers and I grew up in. He could fix or build anything, but to my knowledge he never once read the directions. He just knew how stuff worked.

I remember one Saturday morning when I was 12. I flushed the toilet in the same way I always had. The toilet however, responded in a way that was completely out of character. There was a rumbling sound, followed by a distant gurgle. Then, everything that had gone down reappeared in a rather violent and spectacular fashion.

Naturally, my grandfather was called in to investigate, and within the hour I was invited to join he and my dad in the front yard with picks and shovels.

By lunch, the lawn was littered with fragments of old pipe and mounds of dirt. There was welding and pipe-fitting, blisters and laughter, and maybe some questionable language. By sunset we were completely filthy. But a new pipe was installed, the dirt was back in the hole, and our toilet was back on its best behavior. It was one of my favorite days ever.

Thirty years later in San Francisco when my toilet blew up again. This time, I didn’t participate in the repair process. I just called my landlord, left a check on the kitchen counter, and went to work. When I got home, the mess was cleaned up and the problem was solved. As for the actual plumber who did the work, I never even met him.

It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used to fascinate me. I no longer thought about where my food came from, or how my electricity worked, or who fixed my pipes, or who made my clothes. There was no reason to. I had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought.

At this point my grandfather was well into his 80s, and after a long visit with him one weekend, I decided to do a TV show in his honor…

Mike Rowe goes on to note that what we really need is a “national PR Campaign for Skilled Labor.” Truth be told, this is somewhat offensive to my libertarian sensibilities. In my universe, the government does not go telling us what is important to us — we decide that, and then we vote the government in or out and then they do that.

But that’s a minor quibble. How minor? If we did have a national PR campaign I wouldn’t shed a single tear. Because the man’s right. However we get there…we gotta get there.

We don’t have a lack of respect for skilled labor in this country. In a way, I wish we did. Because if that was the case we could say “Hey, there’s a lack of respect for skilled labor in this country” and then we could take that on. This is more like a slow burn, all smoke no fire — people who dis hard work, and then successfully delude themselves into thinking they don’t. Arguing with that is like nailing the proverbial fart to the wall. But the stink is still there.

It’s the critical thinking that takes a hit. If you never have to actually fix something, you can start thinking, you know, just plain idiotic things. Things like, we elect a black President and it will end racial discord forever…or…when there’s an oil leak in the gulf, what we need is a moratorium against drilling. Dumbass things like those. You’ll see they are most popularly championed in the urban areas. Where people call plumbers instead of doing it themselves, because they can.

Mike Rowe has long been a hero in my house. This just reinforces that. What a speech, and what a guy.

How’s this. Since NBC is rejecting Wonder Woman, she goes back to pages 1 through 22. She goes prancing around in that tiny Lynda Carter thing with her bare legs all hanging out and everything, the whole time. Some feminists try to get her to wear some pants and she completely blows ’em off.

Then she runs up and kicks Superman’s fickle ass of steel.

Everybody ends up happy. Superman the hyper-nationalist super-patriot gets his ass kicked; Superman the sissypants internationalist bozo gets his ass kicked; a woman kicks a man’s ass; and the feminists who try to get all the good-looking women to cover up their legs, are told to stick it. Plus you have Wonder Woman’s bare legs. Everybody wins except ugly feminist women with mustaches, and who gives a rip about them.

Okay, seriously though. What makes comics great, especially comics from the Golden Age. We marvel at them for their consistency. They morph a little bit, but all that shows is that there are fine minds behind these pages, and not automatons. And let’s repeat: They morph a little bit. There’s a balance.

If they’re complete chameleons, then that’s nothing but a digest of current events. Might as well just bag the comic book and sit in on a fashion show. We are amazed by these works of art because something is remaining consistent; without that, they’re just drawings. Drawings aren’t nearly so precious. Lots of people can draw. I mean, I’m not one of ’em, and I don’t mean to put anybody down, but it’s true. In 2011 there are lots and lots of titles out there. But we buy DC and Marvel because? Right. The legacy.

I realize everybody who pitches in is going to want to leave their mark. That’s only natural. And it isn’t undesirable at all. So here’s the guideline I’m proposing: Stick to defining things that aren’t defined yet. Super-freeze-breath is stupid and not supported by the laws of physics…and I don’t mean like flight or super-strength, I mean, not even remotely, not even a little bit. Canx it, it’s dumb. Can Wonder Woman fly? If so, ditch the plane, it’s stupid. If not, keep the plane, but she can’t fly without it. Where the hell do Clark Kent’s shoes go? After 73 years maybe it’s time to come up with an answer to that, right? What happens if Wonder Woman tries to deflect a bullet and she misses? If nothing, then why does she bother trying?

So Superman stands for The American Way…oh yes he does…and Wonder Woman shows off her legs, and whatever brittle ugly women with wretched looking legs don’t like it, along with the “World Without Borders” maniacs wanting Superman to be more international — which he isn’t — they just don’t have to buy the damn thing. I mean, seriously. How much loot were they going to spend, really? How many sponsors’ products were they going to buy? Thought so. Toss ’em out on their ears.

This moment of common sense is brought to you free of charge. You’re welcome.

Update 5/13/11: Aw, can’t believe we missed this. We must be more of a leg man than we thought we were. Even though we wrote about this before it completely went over our head.

The photos. Look at Lynda Carter’s costume…this is what I was talking about, there are elements of it that go clear back to the very beginning, the one with the “beauty contest winner” look and the long false eyelashes. Look down, below the waist. The boots and the skimpy panties that have these nameless no-account busybodies so huffy and peeved. Now look over at Ms. Palicki with the ridiculous horse-jockey outfit.

And then think about Superman renouncing the citizenship, and all that hoop-de-doo.

This is the same effort, the same attempt. They aren’t trying to make it so gorgeous, beautiful young women are dressing like men. That’s part of it, to be sure, but only just…

Wonder Woman, with the ridiculous trouser outfit, was shedding the stars and stripes. The shorts were white stars on a field of blue. The boots were red and white striped.

Now of course, that all makes sense in some way. Comics are sold overseas. If you’re selling comic books, why settle for greenbacks when you can have those, plus euros and pounds and yen? They’re trying to go after an international audience.

But here’s the thing though. People in foreign countries have wanted to buy American products for a long, long time. People in foreign countries, Japan especially, have been interested in American culture. For a relatively long time.

See, America isn’t changing that much. Superman and Wonder Woman, to the extent they exist — as icons of appeal, which I think have been defined through these latest failed attempts to reshape and change them — aren’t changing that much either. At the end of the day, when it comes time to get comic books & related products moved, Superman still embodies American ideals and Wonder Woman wears a swimsuit with boots that have American-flag colors.

Kinda. Depending on the venue.

It’s the rest of the world that is changing. This is what nobody’s paying attention to, and I think they/we should. People overseas who happen to have money, a generation ago, would see a product associated with America and say “I’ll buy that.” Maybe even, “because it’s American and I like American stuff, I’ll buy that.” This year, maybe they’ll buy it if you take out a razor blade and carefully remove the red, white and blue labeling…it isn’t so much the idea it was built in the United States…they don’t want the words, they don’t want that name, they don’t want the colors. We’re being boycotted. These new costumers and artists are still narcissistic pricks itching to be able to say “I’m the one who” completely re-made an icon that is timeless. But they’re acting on behalf of consumers, or potential consumers…who, in turn, are acting on behalf of others who might see them using, or reading, or eating or drinking something with red-white-and-blue. And this isn’t desired.

And no, from what I’m seeing this did not start in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. From what I recollect, this subtle push has been going on since about a decade before that, maybe a bit more.

The solution is completely obvious. We need to boycott back. And no, I don’t think that is a lost option in this day & age in which we owe China a bunch of money. If we’re really suffering the fate of sharecroppers, then it’s in China’s interest that we stand up for ourselves, because debt that is owed by a country set to survive & thrive in the years ahead, is worth much more than debt that is owed by a country petering out of existence.

So says Jim. Yup, I got sucked into another one. And, I have every confidence there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who would agree with Jim on that. Provided they would be compelled to become interested in the exchange.

Ed Darrell did debunk Dr. Sowell, very, very decently. I agree with that; if, by “debunk decently,” we mean “Ed handed down a list of rules that make sense to Ed, about what people should be reading and what they should not be reading.” Ed debunks lots of things this way. It is, for the most part, the only weapon in his arsenal.

Along the way though, the Larry-Moe-Curly triumvirate of Jim Nick and Ed, all communicated the thought with crystal clarity — and it is important to all three of them to get this across, so I have decided I will aid their efforts here. The right wing, which they all think so poorly of, indeed seems to be exempt from the definition of “everyone” as they labor to build the perfect society that welcomes & functions for everyone…gets into the trouble with them, by absorbing information. The left wing, which earns their accolades and adoration, does so by coming up with reasons and excuses not to absorb information. Nearly all the arguments from the friendly crowd at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, from what I see, essentially boil down to the statement of “you should not be reading this thing over here.” Whether it’s Dr. Sowell, or Anthony Watts, or Steven Milloy or Gov. Perry of Texas.

Which is, I think, a situation worth commenting on…since it is a situation much bigger than Fillmore’s bathtub. It stands in perfect contravention to the liberal-self-love theme of “our side isn’t afraid of information but those evil Republicans don’t know how to handle it.” For those who can pay attention to things and remember things long-term, that mindset remains valid until arguments are presented on both sides and then analyzed. And then a pattern emerges: Conservatives say “well, like this guy said” and liberals say “I have a pre-catalogued, pre-circulated, pre-rehearsed reason not to read or listen to anything from over there.” They’ve got this blacklist to which they’re steadily adding names of loathed people. Which, ironically, is supposed to be a major selling point, for their side, against the conservatives. It’s supposed to be the right wing that blacklists people.

Now liberals don’t have a monopoly on this. But it certainly has emerged as one of their defining traits. Prerationalism; yellow-light red-light. “I don’t read anything from there and you shouldn’t either, everyone who reads anything from there is less cool than anybody who doesn’t read it.” That’s yellow light. Right light is the tried-and-true “You are no longer of the community, you shall be shunned, whoever does not shun you shall be shunned, whoever does not shun he who did not shun you will likewise be shunned.”

Larry-Moe-and-Curly, in their rush toward prerationalism, missed a point about Sowell and my citation of his column: It needs no “experimental” support, since I did not cite Dr. Sowell because of his base of knowledge, but rather because of his skill with the written word. Sowell had made a good, and important, point.

One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those words.

One of those words that many people seldom look behind is “education.” But education can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to courses on baton twirling.

You have to be a subscriber, or some kind of regular reader, of Fillmore’s Bathtub to appreciate what really happened here. The focus of this particular blog is somewhat narrow. There is an occasional historical tidbit about Texas; a lot of sniping and grousing about Milloy’s blog and Watt’s blog; much alarmism about people walking around somewhere, thinking the wrong things, reading the wrong things, which do not service the interests of the democrat party in Texas or in the nation. Lots about global warming, much more about DDT and eggshell thinning. The balance of what remains, and what remains covers perhaps half of the total volume, perhaps more than that — is a lot of bitching about Governor Perry and other Republicans bringing harm to “education” by cutting a budget item, or making moves to cut it. Rest assured, Darrell does provide support for his claims. But you can forget about any balanced argument, any mention of why someone would think of cutting the item. You’d think it would be set up once in awhile to be made an object of ridicule, but I don’t see it happening much. Just — these evil guys who hate education are about to cut something, so help me hate them.

The word “education” is being used as a label which, on inspection does not seem to apply to what would be described by a reasonable person in such a way. And, if the method of argumentation is a model for what this is supposed to mean…well, it doesn’t come off as very educated.

By pointing out that the e-word is very often used to describe a spectrum of things that is so broad as to become linguistically unworkable, it is Sowell that has done a decent job of debunking Ed Darrell and his two lackeys. Reams and reams and reams of what they have had to say, in fact. With just three well-crafted sentences making up two short paragraphs.

The takeaway from all this is another recollection of Thing I Know #183:

When an education has given you the ability to dismiss ideas more quickly, it’s not really an education.

Which I suppose builds on Sowell’s point (before I heard of it). Too many people are living among us and making much out of a habit of blocking information out by means of something they describe with this word “education”; they seem to think of education as a process of essentially sticking your fingers in your ears and going la la la. You see them do this all the time, really — this awful loathed person over here actually paid attention to that awful loathed bit of information over there…therefore…he is uneducated…while, contrasted with that, me and my friends made a point of not paying attention to the awful loathed bit of information, therefore we are better educated.

Nevermind that this “in-crowd” is now thoroughly unable to describe the details of the information that was exchanged, which they then want to complain about. And they’re proud of not being able to explore it in detail, as they proceed to complain.

I don’t know about you. But that isn’t what I think of as “educated.”

By the way. The other article Sowell wrote, which got him on this Larry-Moe-Curly-McCarthy-blacklist thing, so that “educated” people prove their education by making sure they’re never exposed to what Sowell has to say…is here. It makes an important point: “[A] democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.” Many among those who claim to be “educated,” and to value something they prefer to call “education,” don’t seem to be in favor of this informed citizenry. This particular Sowell column is complained about a whole lot in liberal circles, especially on the web. Interestingly, you won’t find too many links directly to the column. Many more of such screeds will only point to other such screeds, and not to the source of the outrage.

Liberals do that an awful lot, I’ve noticed.

Update at 2010PDT Today: The trackback from this post has had an effect very much like tossing a lit match into a barrel of gasoline, as I knew it would. New life has been breathed into Ed’s post, and Larry Moe & Curly are now climbing all over themselves. Once again — it has degenerated into a jerk-off session which examines and re-examines all the things that make left-wing people more wonderful and awesome and decent than right-wing people. Mr. Darrell seems to have forgotten his original point was about the funding of public schools, and now wishes to examine the tragedy of all families in said schools not making an equal amount of money — his new lamentation is about the lack of funding to the households I think.

It’s not possible to determine that, of course. Here’s the thing about Ed Darrell: He goes on and on about such-and-such an opposing force having failed “to provide evidence for their claims” or “provide support for his claims.” But the targets of such criticism are one-up on him, because whether supported or not at least their claims are defined. Ed’s claims are not defined. He links to a page full of statistics and graphs and charts and data, pointing out this debunks something Dr. Sowell said. But there are no specifics. What is being debunked, exactly? I can’t answer that and neither can you, unless your name is Ed Darrell. But Darrell won’t.

But who cares. It’s all about those three being better people…than…whoever is on the other side of some imaginary fence. Makes this quote from Orwell’s 1984 seem apropos:

But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. [emphasis mine]

This is why it’s important to discuss this. Nick Jr. typifies the cognitive dissonance. This is the guy who said:

What is the one thing in this country that can bring everyone together?

Government.

…and then self-corrected to…

Correction. That should “the one and only thing that can bring people together in this country.”

If you take the time to look (it’s a lot of looking, Nick’s posts never seem to stand on their own, he tends to post again and again and again, he’s a bit of a scatterbrain) you’ll see pretty much everything he’s had to say is that Republicans are worse people than…something. Liberals, democrats, Michael Moore fans, anarchists, something. It requires a great deal less courage, less intellectual fortitude, to oppose something than to build something.

Nick, whether he realizes it or not — and I think he does, but who knows — entirely lacks passion about the personal goals he has in mind as he has defined them, in writing. He doesn’t really want government, or anything else, bringing anybody together with anybody else. But the Orwell quote, along with Nick’s flip-flopping, really captures what applies to all three. A thrill of victory running in a vicious cycle. A boot stepping on a face, forever.

Again, there is nothing unique here. Nothing special about Fillmore’s Bathtub at all. This is a very big phenomenon taking place. It’s going on, right now, coast to coast. Our liberals are batshit crazy.

A popular talking point among the GOP has surfaced in response to the President’s “gutsy” call to take out Osama bin Laden, and it goes something like “well, what kind of idiot would have made any other call?”

It’s popular because it makes an important point that is forgotten all too often, which in turn means something. President Obama’s greatest achievement, ever, is now defined and crystallized. He is never going to top this one, and what it says about Him is — not a whole lot, when you get down to it. You can’t point to an Obama policy that started a chain of events culminating in the death of bin Laden. But you can certainly point to a lot of such policies of His predecessor, that guy He castigated over and over again on the campaign trail, and over and over again after He was inaugurated and started His “rule,” as if He was still campaigning.

So Obama takes credit for policies that not only are on the outside of anything He ever would have enacted, anytime, anyplace, ever…He also takes credit for policies He repeatedly spoke out against, even after He was sworn in and there should have been no further need to campaign. When He was supposed to have been so busy doing His job that there shouldn’t have been any time for campaigning for a job He already had. In fact it’s fair to say He neglected that job so He could take time out of it — inexplicably — to campaign for it.

Had He spent more time making decisions in that job & following up on those decisions, rather than campaigning for the job as if He didn’t have it yet when He actually did…a lot of those policies, which culminated in the death of bin Laden and thus the beneficial result, probably would no longer have been in force. In this way, the talking point is a powerful and persuasive argument — although it probably requires a much greater attention span to receive all of it, in the case of anyone outside the audience of those who really need to hear it.

But you know what? Now the talking point has an answer. President of the United States Ron Paul.

Ron Paul says he would not have authorized the mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, and that President Barack Obama should have worked with the Pakistani government instead of authorizing a raid.

“I think things could have been done somewhat differently,” Paul said this week. “I would suggest the way they got Khalid [Sheikh] Mohammed. We went and cooperated with Pakistan. They arrested him, actually, and turned him over to us, and he’s been in prison. Why can’t we work with the government?”

Asked by WHO Radio’s Simon Conway whether he would have given the go-ahead to kill bin Laden if it meant entering another country, Paul shot back that it “absolutely was not necessary.”

“I don’t think it was necessary, no. It absolutely was not necessary,” Paul said during his Tuesday comments. “I think respect for the rule of law and world law and international law. What if he’d been in a hotel in London? We wanted to keep it secret, so would we have sent the airplane, you know the helicopters into London, because they were afraid the information would get out?”

The Ron Paul Apologia Squad is aptly represented in the comment section, I see. But I have yet to see a single comment say something to the effect of “When Bush went in and got Saddam Hussein back in ’03, that’s the way we should have done it.” See, if you’re really going to do something about a problem and discard the option of “ostrich diplomacy” sticking your head in the ground and hoping the problem goes away — you want to do something about it — then it’s one or the other. You work your way through the bad-guy military one flank at a time, which means body bags; or you send an elite squad in to make a neat little hole in the BigBad’s head.

This is why I find it hard to respect the Ron Paul movement; or, for that matter, those who support that movement. If these people are being sincere in discussing how decisions should be made at the top of our government, by which I mean they’re conducting their own lives in a manner consistent with the way they want these decisions to be made — then, they must not be capable of making decisions, since they cannot meaningfully comprehend the list of available options.

We’ve got a lot of people running around with this problem, I notice. They aren’t all Ron Paul fans. They like to speechify, and they can do a grand job of doing it, against some decision someone else made. But they can’t pick something themselves, and what’s worse, they don’t seem to care.

Just speaking for myself, if both options are available, I like Obama’s solution much better. People in the military are, generally speaking, about half my age or less than that. I like seeing them live. And I like seeing bad people humiliated as they’re taken down, by being taken down without too much of a fuss. Many’s the time I said, before Saddam was taken down, that that’s what should happen to him. One bullet, a .22 short, and save the casing. Then let it be said that the terror that is the regime of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, was taken down by a bullet thiiiiiiiis big. That would have been ideal. Plate that puppy in 22k gold and display it in the Smithsonian.

Yes, this leads to a debate about whether the .22 short can be lethal. It should be considered as such, in the sense that proper safety on the range (where the .22 short is used most often, I expect) demands that all projectiles be considered potentially lethal. But in a highly coordinated move on a compound based on a decade of accumulated intelligence work, would you use one where it counts, with no second-chances…custom-made, sharpened, depleted-uranium slug? With some snarky insult chiseled on it. Can you fire DU with the measure of gunpowder in a .22 short cartridge? That debate becomes more technically involved than it’s worth. Still a fun thing to think about.

Back to the subject at hand. It’s still a valid talking point the Republicans have. Obama is in a precarious position with this business about “I’m the badass who who took down bin Laden” propaganda gravy train, because the facts say His singularly greatest achievement anywhere is something He got done by staying out of the way, letting better men getting the work done, and being the meaningless figurehead who just happened to have been in charge when it went down. If you really want to dig for something He did that led to the good results, you end up with a bunch of broken promises. He was supposed to shut down Guantanamo but didn’t; He was supposed to stop the War on Terror but didn’t; He was supposed to “change” this, that, or some other silly thing, but didn’t.

You want to have your singularly greatest achievement within this earthly existence, ever, accomplished in such a way? Again, I must confine my remarks to my own personal situation and speak solely for myself. But no. A decisive negatori on that.

Be all that as it may: Going forward, let us not call this “what idiot would’ve” argument unanswerable…for it has been answered. There is an idiot who would have made another call.

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

Victor Davis Hanson explores the written rules and regulations of targeted-assassination warfare, and then the unwritten rules & regs we actually follow:

It’s…easier to conduct assassinations abroad if the Commander-in-Chief is liberal. This neutralizes criticism from the media, universities, the legal community, and Hollywood. Obama the law professor can assassinate bin Laden in Pakistan, dump his body in the ocean, and with first-person emphasis boast of our brilliant mission in a way Bush the Texan could not get away with—in the same manner that killing the son of Qaddafi, and the effort to kill Qaddafi himself, are not really forbidden targeted assassinations under Obama, and in the manner that Guantánamo, tribunals, renditions, preventive detentions, Predators, wiretaps, and intercepts that so bothered Senator Obama and others are now deemed essential. This paradox is just the way it is; the media will report a liberal president’s Predator drone attack or commando hit as done with reluctance and without other viable choices. Were a conservative leader to take the same actions, he would be portrayed as a trigger-happy war-monger reveling in the violence. Thus, the street celebrations that ensued when news of bin Laden’s death broke are seen by the media as a new unity inspired by Obama. Three years ago, they would have been seen as macabre triumphalism.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

The solution, obviously, is to make it less profitable to bring the gas to market.

Linking two of the politically volatile issues of the moment, Senate Democrats say they will move forward this week with a plan that would eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies and divert the savings to offset the deficit.

With high gas prices and rising federal deficits in the political spotlight, senior Democrats believe that tying the two together will put pressure on Senate Republicans to support the measure or face a difficult time explaining their opposition to voters whose family budgets are being strained by fuel prices.
:
“Big Oil certainly doesn’t need the collective money of taxpayers in this country,” said Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the authors of the legislation that Democrats intend to showcase. “This is as good a time as any in terms of pain at the pump and in revenues needed for deficit reduction.”

It’s a bigger issue than gasoline. The liberal democrat solution to any commodity becoming more expensive, is to take the profit angle out of it, sit back & hope for the best. Scoring: Problem remains but profit is gone == success; problem solved but profit is made solving the problem == failure.

And, problem remains and someone’s still making a profit == try again.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

It has to work this time around. When a company is forced to give up its profit through increased taxes, isn’t that company’s natural reaction one of “Golly! That Congress, representing The People, sure does hate us a lot! We’d better lower our prices!” Yeah, there is a long and rich history of this working out just great. Never fails.

Discussed further at Althouse’s place, where Crimso comments:

In order to be “fair,” the government should only take the “collective” money that reflects profits. What percent of revenues (on average) of the oil companies is profit. Never mind. I already know the answer, and I know there’s a shitload of companies who have much higher profit margins.

So now some jackass, or perhaps more accurately looter or thief, a member of Congress (but I repeat myself) wants to decide how much of “our” money the oil companies deserve. “A republic, if you can keep it,” indeed. I guess we can’t.

I’m taking my girlfriend to breakfast, but it’s got nothing to do with Mother’s Day. She’s clocking in to work at the reasonable hour of eleven o’clock, so we’re going to take advantage and spend some time together.

The Freeberg family doesn’t have any actual mothers in it. The Freeberg-male eccentricity drove them all off; the ones who managed to survive it, anyway. Mom died years ago, “Kidzmom” is off in Nevada and it’s up to the boy to take the initiative to honor his Mother, and in his fourteenth year I hope to hell he’s got enough going on to do it without being reminded. If not, I’ll give him a good thumpin’ when he gets here and that will be my Mother’s Day contribution.

That, and bitching about the long line at the restaurant.

Anyway. Hope yours is happy. Let Mom know you’re thinking of her, while she’s still here.

Update: “I have no doubt that as a matter of course, she handled pains that would have crushed me, and whatever strength I may have, I credit to her and to God.” Professor Mondo delivers up some wonderful prose describing the story behind his white carnation. It fits ours as well, as it happens.

Dad’s second-most-recent visit down here was back in ’07; he took Amtrak. He left with a vow never to take Amtrak again, since he spent something like thirty hours on a route that was supposed to take only twenty-four or something. From what I hear, this is a common experience on Amtrak, much of which runs on borrowed rail that belongs to Union-Pacific…or somebody. And so I found it curious when, after Joe Biden’s announced selection as Barack Obama’s running mate, I was looking up his entry in Wikipedia and stumbled across a paragraph extolling the Senator’s virtues as a regular Amtrak rider. Joe Biden’s awesome! He rides Amtrak! Yay! (I see now, the tone is different, applying more focus to Biden’s five-year stretch as a single-dad and the tragedy that started said stretch; but that creates more questions than answers, with the high fallibility involved in Amtrak schedules.)

I thought back to this, briefly, when I read George Will’s excellent column called “Why Democrats Love Trains.” It’s all about one word: dependency.

Yesterday, I immersed myself in the dependency class. I rode the light rail downtown, looped back up North-ward, used my mountain bike spun in to the University district and caught the light rail back home again. I still haven’t made up my mind whether this is a humbling experience, or the reverse. I’m very fortunate to enjoy a three-mile commute Monday through Friday, and to live in an area with a much higher per-household income compared to what surrounds us. I consider my horizons to have been broadened by the unpleasantness.

It makes me look at my own single-dad-ness much differently. You’ll notice, all across the political spectrum we make much of the idea that people should not judge other people, and it becomes doubly wrong to judge people based on a superficial glance. So I try not to. But then again, we also make much of the idea that something called the “environment” has a state to it, and we should avail ourselves of every opportunity to think about that state and our effect on it as we pass through it; try to keep it as it is, avoid making it worse, maybe even make it better.

Well guess what. You have to judge people in order to do that. If, as a parent, you’re going to be adding some.

And this thought, as is the case with the thought above, comes down to that one word dependency. Again.

It impresses me that, as I pass through this big valley, these wide swaths of ground where I’m thinking “must get the fuck out of here before dark, must get the fuck out of here before dark,” the ones whose names show up in the newspaper where the murders happened, overlay with remarkable precision the places serviced by light rail and by bus lines. It’s true in Sacramento, in Seattle, in Detroit, and every other “big” place I’ve ever lived or visited. I’m given to entertaining the thought that this is a testament to good design. People in humble areas need to get to work, they don’t get to pick and choose where that work is going to be, and many cannot afford cars.

The problem with that theory is that it accounts only for an approximation. I’m seeing much more than an approximation here; I’m seeing the sort of precision you see when your hand is covered by a latex glove. A light rail system cannot evolve; at least, not easily. This system reachs a terminus in my district, in downtown Folsom. It’s then up to me to saddle up again and cycle the remaining four miles home, regardless of which of the last three stations I chose. It’s as if, the day they were laying track, someone said “Okay, I just saw three houses in a row worth more than such-and-such, so we stop here.”

You simply can’t walk through how that would work. Tearing up track is exorbitant, and the same goes for laying new track. Not an everyday occurrence. So the route is static. If it were dynamic, how would the heavy demand in humble areas, and the lighter demand in more affluent areas, translate into a force on this supposedly-dynamic track? The market forces are light: A two-hour pass for $2.50, all-day ticket for $6.00. Light rail systems, by design, are to be a rebuke against the free market anyway. It’s hard to think of a profitable one, even harder to think of one that remains profitable for several years in a row. So they’re not situated well to flex, to accommodate the signals of supply and demand. This theory is not in healthy shape, and its health deteriorates further when I throw more observations at it — that’s a sign that the theory isn’t a good one.

Besides of which, after I got myself a nice day’s exercise and a quality sunburn, the first station I hit on Power Inn road, wasn’t selling tickets. The machine was busted. I chose to ride on eastward and buy a pass at the next one. My fellow “passengers” at this location, did not have such an option and they didn’t very much care. They were hopping the turnstyle. Of course they were; whadya think they’re gonna do? Wonder if the regional transit authority knows the machines are busted here? The repairs looked inexpensive, to me. One machine complained specifically of its paper roll being empty. The other might consider accommodating if the customer could pay the six dollars in coin.

I know, from experience, how this works. The dependency-class is dependent. It depends on a service, and because it is dependent, anybody who denies the service, by action or inaction, is infringing on a fundamental human right. And, should this take place, this imbues the dependency-class with new rights it would not otherwise have. And so The System, which denied the service by inaction and failing to keep the machines in good working order, has it comin’. The rail hoppers will enter, again, that surreal region in which a crime is to be committed, but not really, because it is a “gettin’ even” for another crime that was committed. A written law will be violated, as redress of grievances for the violation of some other unwritten law.

So I think back to the four possibilities that arise with correlation:

A. X causes Y
B. Y causes X
C. An unseen-as-yet Z, causes both X and Y
D. It’s all a coincidence

And so I slip down to the next on the list, which I like better. It is in healthier shape, after I get done assaulting it with observations and facts. This other theory says the crime and the blight and the dysfunction, start with the rail system and radiate outward. Y, the rail, causes X, the rancor, weirdness, borderline-mental-illness, diminished skill. That would explain the neat precision overlay on the map.

A dependency relationship, we see once again, is toxic. We are very slow to catch on to this when we are given evidence of it, because we are taught a great deal to the contrary. We are taught “no man is an island,” that communities that thrive and prosper, are communities in which people depend on each other. That may or may not be true. But I think what has to be realized here, is that there is a difference between people depending on each other, and people putting together a system and then other people coming to depend on that system. A community filled with inter-dependence relationships is personal; a leviathan system providing spotty, splotchy, unreliable service to a dependency-class of vengeful moochers, is impersonal.

You know, I think it comes down to that old saying about democrats. There can be no denying how much they love poor people — all their policies keep them that way, and create more.

In about a week and a half, Our First Holy Divine Man-God-Boy-King President has acquired and released a form of identification, and then claimed credit for dispatching the most wanted man in the entire world. His is a unique case in which these achievements are roughly equivalent.

I’m ready to take a new approach on this, since I’m still trying to process and organize my reactions. People are still bitching about my posts being too long. So — let’s just list the reactions and call it good. One per line and then bail out.

It occurs to me that the result would be just as worthy an artifact to seal up in a time capsule, for the edification of my grandchildren, as any other. So. Without further ado.

1. Chuckling at the talking heads on the news getting “Obama” all mixed up with “Osama.”
2. Marveling at the consistency with which conservatives place the interests of country over party.
3. Wondering if liberals would handle it the same way if Osama bit the mat during the previous administration.
4. No, not really.
5. Thankful for the fighting men in our Navy SEAL units, and in all our military, and the gals too.
6. Still can’t believe Obama is so inept at PR, that victory over bin Laden has turned into a net loss for Him.
7. Absolutely sickened by the decision not to release photos, and genuinely so, not putting on an act.
8. Trying to think of the last good thing I ever learned about this President, that I was allowed to verify for myself.
9. Taking note, again and again and again, of a three-stanza-anthem that has emerged among Obama’s supporters:
 • a. Why should He release anything He doesn’t have to prove anything and He doesn’t owe anybody anything;
 • b. Place all your faith in these (nameless) wise sages who surround The Obama, because that’s what I’m doing;
 • c. Feck off you’re unworthy and should be banished from our super-perfect Obamatopia.
10. Wondering how this affects the domestic issues in the long run.
11. Hoping desperately that the White House has already run into that gut-wrenching “we’ve overplayed our hand” feeling.
12. In a state of dread over what wretched ideas we’re going to see, should that not be the case.
13. In a state of abject bewilderment that such smart people can make the same mistakes over and over again.
14. Isn’t this the equivalent of “parallel parking by Braille”?
15. Gloating that the “birther” movement seems to have declined by half, or more.
16. Noting that this is precisely what we were told, with such condescending certainty, would not happen.
17. Waiting for the apology that I know will not come.
18. Looking forward to many years coming & going without my having to hear “it wouldn’t convince anybody anyway…”
19. Knowing that isn’t going to happen either.
20. Wondering what kind of people would toss out the “wouldn’t convince anyone” bromide without feeling deep shame.
21. Not looking forward to coming into contact with such people.
22. Still walking on air because Osama bin Laden’s dead.
23. Befuddled about the Too Civilized and Evolved to See Any Good Here crowd.
24. Have no idea what in the world is driving them.
25. No wait, now that I think on it, the problem is I have way too many ideas about what is, or might be, driving them.
26. None of these ideas say anything good about them for being the way they are.
27. Or about the rest of us, for putting up with them.
28. Wondering what act of revenge Al Qaeda will try to launch over here.
29. No, not really.
30. But cautious vigilance is always a good thing…to whatever extent it’s my place to exercise it.
31. Wondering where premium gas is going to be by Memorial Day weekend.
32. Hoping everybody looking for work, that is ready willing & able to accept a job offer, gets one.
33. Wondering how that would work for them, if these jackasses didn’t show up talking the economy down every day.
34. Wishing a case of worms on them. Seriously, if you don’t know things will get better, just say you don’t know.
35. Trying to figure out why, if President Awesome is so Awesome, it costs a billion dollars to re-elect Him.

Speaking of blogger friend Phil: He was egging me on, with regarding to a sort of half-assed plan I had germinating in my head anyway. About an hour from here up into the mountains, we have this really cool road that goes up into many, many square miles of hiking and camping spread known as El Dorado National Forest. The plan was to haul the mountain bike up there, along with the Little Joe which is now something like five seven years old, and horribly under-used, with a thick layer of dust all over it. Thought I’d take advantage of the off-season and the diminished traffic, sort of build up my confidence with the device.

Because it’s an intimidating thing, you know, if you haven’t put it into some real use just yet. Dumping your pedal equipment in the middle of the Highway 50 corridor, you know, it could get someone killed. But the machine does seem to be in good working order…just need to get it into circulation.

Well, I forgot the Little Joe. But that was a secondary mission. The primary focus was just exploring the campground. You see, this far up into the mountains, the campgrounds remain frozen like popsicles into the month of May. And so, knowing that the road was closed off to motorized vehicles, I had promised my son that I’d go on this venture to use the pedal-power and check out the campground we had reserved for this summer, when he comes to see us.

This gets into some personal stuff I haven’t written about here. There’s an agreement going on here, one in which both sides have had to flex a little. The boy is with his Mother for the school year right now, we get him during the summer. We’re winding up the first year in which it’s worked out like this. There’s been just a whole lot of the other kind of thing…you know…Momma gets him for the fun summer things, we have to deal with bedtimes and homework and yelling and drama and…and…and. Which, right now, she’s dealing with. As she has all year. But we haven’t had our fun times with the kid yet, and we’re looking forward to that. So we’re looking forward to the fun. Of course, he’s coming up on fourteen, so it isn’t quite as much fun as it would’ve been earlier…

That’s something of a tragedy, of course. We try not to think about it too much. But the fact is, life is not a dress rehearsal. On the other hand — although fourteen is too old for water parks, it’s just right for camping out, figuring out the Seven Manly Ways to Start Fires with your old man…and s’mores.

So I gassed up in Placerville, and managed to find a good parking spot up in the forest just on the early side of ten o’clock. Most weekends, the girlfriend works Saturday and I confine my adventuring to that day of the week. On this particular one she had Sunday allocated as well, so while she slaved away, I bolted together the bike and set to exploring.

The clock on my point-and-shoot is a bit fast, I think by about twenty minutes or so, maybe more.

Here we’ve barged on in past the gate, which you can see if you blow this up enough. Now, one month previous to this shot we were fortunate enough to check this place out — three generations of Freeberg males. It was the first week of April and we were walking around on the snow on top of this gate. So you see, there is a good amount of meltin’ goin’ on. On the previous trip, even on pedal power this would have been quite unthinkable.

As it is, according to the website, this road is open up to cars on May 26. That’s something, isn’t it? Here we are barely four thousand feet above sea level…doesn’t seem Californian at all, huh. Memorial Day weekend and the place is going to be in its first week open, because of snow.

It’s hard to believe, but these campsites are still in premium demand. You’ve heard that California is packed with pussies who consider it a hardship when their four-dollar coffee drinks are made with real milk instead of soy. Well, you’re right about that…California natives get goosebumps if the temperature is below 75 degrees, and start shivering.

But they snatch up these campsites fast enough. Go figure. The “furlough Fridays” have a lot to do with that, as I’ve written before.

As you can see from this shot, it seems going forward we’re snow-free. This is, if I’m remembering right, about 0.42 miles away from where we assembled the bike, 0.15 miles from the gate that blocks off the car traffic.

From this point, the road meanders around, constantly on a downhill grade. Of course, after that sharp turn, I’m cut off from all kinds of civilization…motorized…visual. Wonder if there’s bears down there?

But I told my son I’d check the place out. A promise made is a debt unpaid. So onward we go.

By the way, all of these stills are clickable. Click for larger if you are so inclined; I had my camera set to 3072 pixels wide.

Took a side trip here to check out what’s going on. The bike computer says I’m 1.08 miles in. Why did I take a picture of this placard? What is it I keep telling you about tree-hugging hippies…they smell like grass, corn chips and butt crack, and nobody ever tells them no. About anything. Ever. Except when…no…actually there are no exceptions. Nobody ever tells the long-haired hippies no.

Really, I’ve got nothing to complain about. It’s not like a city block is being closed off for these damn birds. My objection is not so much to the infringement of space, but of time. May 26 is pretty damn late in the year you know.

So once again, the “long pig” is making room for the other creatures. This is in blatant contravention against the Book of Genesis, which makes it abundantly clear that Man is to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky. But the pagans with their incense candles and their tie-dyed shirts and their lava lamps and their henna and their ponytails, demand absolute deference. And so, to the animals, the homo sapiens must yield. Hope they appreciate it. The beasts, I mean, not the hippies.

Actually I hope the hippies appreciate it too. Peace, man.

This is not a long-distance trek by any means. We knew that going in. But at this point something interesting, and not completely expected, happens: Water. Frozen. Lots and lots of it. Take a look; the camera is pointing in the direction in which we are traveling, 1.92 miles in. As you can see, we have a little bit of a situation going on. The two-wheel form of travel has reached a decisive dead-end.

We’re hoofing it from here.

The up-side is that we can leave the Trek on its kickstand, exactly as you see it. Bears are not known for their skills, nor for their enthusiasm, when it comes to stealing bikes. Candy bars and Little Debbies, maybe, but not bikes. Must be their butts being too big for the seats, or something.

But I do have to say, it’s a pleasant change of pace to just leave the bike where it is. Even peeled the helmet off my head and just chucked it to the ground as I continued onward, exploring on two feet. Campsites 81 through 111 are down this way, and we’ve reserved campsite 101.

We did not find campsite 101 as it turns out. You see, this snow…it’s in a process of melting and freezing and melting again and freezing again. It borders on a “snowshoe” adventure, and we were in sneakers. In our urban, sedentary lifestyle, we are of generous girth and the pounds-per-square-inch where our soles meet the earth, is a figure in a state of gradual increase.

So we had to shift our weight carefully in order to avoid sinking. Up to our waist. Bottom line? We didn’t explore too much from this point.

Here’s the reservoir, as viewed from the campground.

Across this body of water, there’s another campground we’ve been visiting on & off since the boy was about five or six (he’ll be fourteen this summer). So we’re looking at something familiar to the two of us, from a new angle for me.

At this point, I’m really looking forward to this. The wonderful thing about California is that the nighttime sky changes a whole lot depending on how secluded you are. There is the light pollution, and then there is the gas that comes from human activity. You get away from those two things and it is amazing how many stars you can see.

Of course, right now I’m not too concerned with stars. I’m a little concerned about bears.

On the way back, I saw one of these “bear proof” food repositories. They’re like garbage dumpsters, except weighted down so that a bear can’t tip them over. We-ell…this one was actually tipped over. Made me stop & go hmmm.

This last photo is of the only casualties on the trip, so far as I can see. I didn’t get nibbled by a bear, didn’t see any bears. But these things? My guess is: snowmen. I think what we’re looking at, here, is a snowman graveyard.

So I’m in at a little bit before ten in the morning, out at slightly after eleven.

Incidentally: On the way back to civilization, I stopped off at C & T’s restaurant in Pollock Pines. During the “Dad Grandpa and Kid” trip a month back, we breezed on in at 1:55 and kept them late…turned out their closing time was two. They accommodated us until we were good & ready to leave, not looking the least bit peeved. The service is excellent, the food is just as good. You should go.

This time, I didn’t act like a complete butthole. I patronized them promptly at 11:45.

Now, lessee…we get the kid right after school closes out, in early June. So I’m probably checking this place out one more time, most likely on the 4th of June at which time the road will be open. I could go the weekend before, really. Once the reservation timeframe is upon us, the boy is going to learn something about being a “quartermaster” on this particular camping trip. The meanie-cows who run the El Dorado web site insist on a two-day stay; we’re going to use this to make Friday night into a “shakedown,” and once we have a good inventory of all the goods & supplies we forgot to pack, we’ll descend upon Kyburz, or Pollock Pines — maybe both — snapping up whatever didn’t make the first inventory, at premium prices, for our second night out.

That’s a good camping trip right after the fourteenth birthday, I think. That’s a good age to learn your Dad is fallible and flawed and imperfect — you can’t just hang back, hope the old man thinks of everything, wait to be entertained. Participation becomes a requirement. And you know, in my world that’s healthy.

Anyway, I survived. The bears didn’t get me.

Can’t speak for you, but I’m convinced these fuckers are intelligent.

Every year, somewhere close to the Vernal Equinox it starts. They come out and start pushing the envelope. In wasp-language, they submit the proposition, signed sealed & delivered, that our balcony actually belongs to them.

We courteously submit a rebuttal, in wasp-language.

And so beginning on the Paschal Full Moon or thereabouts, I begin my sentry duties outside. Laptop, beer bottle, Wasp & Hornet Spray. Try not to go mixing ’em up.

And then laptop, empty beer bottle, full beer bottle, spray. Laptop, two empty beer bottles, beer bottle, spray. Now we’re at laptop, empty beer bottle, empty beer bottle, empty beer bottle, empty beer bottle, beer bottle, spray. Try not to mix ’em up.

Now here is the spooky part: Following Mother’s Day, or even Easter, there isn’t any spraying going on. It isn’t necessary. Wasps, I’m convinced — and I don’t give a shit what the entomologists have to say about this, okay? — understand the human-like concept of a “property line.” I am stalwart in this belief because I see it happen. They bob & weave the way they do, lazily to & fro…they sort of wander right up to where our negotiations concluded, and they wander right back again. I could measure it down to the fraction of the inch. And you know what? It works this way well past Labor Day, until there are Halloween decorations in the drugstores. At which time they disappear. Lay their eggs, and then salmon-like, go off and die?

It does seem to me that the negotiations need to be resumed the following year. Not possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of insect hibernation/reproduction rituals, I assume I am addressing a new generation. But even if that be the case, it seems to me there are genetic artifacts of what was negotiated the season previous. It’s as if momma wasp and daddy wasp told ’em, “don’t fuck with that guy with the can up there, he’s an asshole” and they listened somewhat.

The theories presented here, I have an opportunity to subject to a vigorous test. A tree is engulfing our balcony. It is deciduous, its pitch flows outward to the farthest leaves on the farthest branches. The wasps love it. But once those lines are negotiated in the springtime, they remain in full force throughout the entire year, and razor sharp.

No further negotiation necessary. Wasps is smart.

Had an argument over on the Hello Kitty of Blogging about the Osama bin Laden post mortem picture not being released…of course, I completely eviscerated the opposition in every conceivable way. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I thought it too: All smirking egotists think they’ve prevailed in all discussions whether they really did or not. But of course you can’t measure that!

In this case, though, you can. Because every single one of my opponent’s points packed a persuasive punch, but only for people who think things through emotionally, to those who make logic a loathed stranger to be kept at a distance. For those to whom logic is a welcome friend to be embraced, everything he said was impotent.

He deployed three of the best.

1. It won’t change minds, because whoever isn’t convinced in the moment I’m typing this, will never be convinced. This one did startle me, I must say. I would have thought the entire nation got its fill of this last week.
2. These other people over here are part of a formidable “brain trust,” they know better than you do even though I cannot name their names; so why don’t you just shut up and think what they tell you to think. (One of the many problems this creates is: If I’m so insignificant that my opinion shouldn’t have any effect on anything compared to these intellectual titans, then the exercise of convincing me of something must be completely meaningless; so why are we having this conversation?)
3. Prerationalism. You are to be banished from the village gates, sir! Ostracized, to whither and perish in the harsh winter, and I get your ration of milk and grain!

As I commented in there: My position is absolutely moderate with regard to the bin Laden death photograph, just as it was with regard to the birth certificate. I am steadfastly convinced of the opinion President Obama wants me to have. But I will not join in on this exercise of heckling, ridiculing, browbeating, cajoling and bludgeoning those who dissent. I regard their disagreement to be reasonable. That’s called, having the ability to intellectually engage people who have different opinions. Does our President have this ability?

Furthermore, the merits of the doubter’s arguments — the arguments of those who call President Obama a liar — although not sufficient to sway me toward their point of view, is in a state of ascension as more feeble excuses are produced in lieu of the actual documentation. And, my own certainty that the President’s statement of the facts is the correct one, is in a state of decline. All of this is only reasonable.

President Obama has made a career out of a favorite catchphrase of His, “We Must Reject The False Choice.” How ironic it is that He has made a favorite maneuver out of one such false choice: Take My word for it, and oh by the way, if you take My word for it I will count on your support to help defeat and disenfranchise those who are not taking My word for it. That is, in & of itself, a “false choice” is it not? It sounds so…Sith-like, so dealing-in-absolutes-ish. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t that sound like “you’re a friend of us or else you’re a friend of the terrorists”? Wasn’t Birther Zero elected to put a stop to that kind of intellectual simplicity?

But the reason I’m jotting down a memo-for-file on this is: It seems to me these three logical fallacies, historically, have been cellophaned together onto a common flat. In fact, it seems to me they have historically arrived in sequence. Goldilocks slept in a bed that was too hard, too soft, just right. The wolf blew down the house of straw, then the house of sticks, then made a play for the brick and the mortar. Scrooge was haunted by Christmas-past, Christmas-present, Christmas-yet-to-come. Brahma/Creator, Vishnu/Preserver, Shiva/Destroyer. Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Jedi. Sine, Cosine, Tangent. Prue, Piper, Phoebe. Larry, Moe, Curly. That particular prime number seems to be a seed for the universe we know, and in which we are bound. Defined sequences seem to surround it at all times; this appears to be a cosmic constant.

Thus it is with dipshit liberal arguments: alpha, beta, gamma.

I often make much of the weak arguments, the arguments formulated for those who are lacking in a decent, working, long-term memory; those who, as mentioned above, treat logic as a loathed stranger to be kept away. I place pride in my ability to avoid these derelict arguments, to detect what is wrong with them — therefore I have pride in my own long-term memory. But I must admit to being a flawed ugly-bag-of-mostly-water, and my own memory is not infallible. I cannot rattle off a list of previous examples of this; I’m just picking up a vibe. A vibe of deja vu. I wish to crystallize this vibe into an article of reference that, later on, maybe I can use. That’s what memos-for-file are really all about.

I must say, though, I have a great deal more faith in the vibe than I have in most “vibes.” I think there is going to be a pattern detected from this. No point producing the smoking gun nobody will be convinced anyway; why don’t you just shut up and believe these nameless faceless demigod experts; you are to be banished from the village. I’ve gone into detail about each one of these feckless arguments. What is new here is the sequence. I think the sequence is something of a constant. I’ll test the theory in the time that stretches out before me, assuming The Lord sees fit to keep me on the planet for a suitable timeframe.

In the meantime, do I need to state the obvious? Those who are engaged in an attempt to present an argument that possesses real merit, should not need to make use of any of these techniques, or anything remotely like them. They are anti-logical. Like Jedi mind tricks, they only work on the weak minded. A healthy intellect won’t even lose track of a rhythm, should they appear, because if the powers of observation are working, recognition will be immediate. And it was.

Update: Somewhere in my archives, I had made a point of linking to blogger friend Phil…who, somewhere in his archives, summarized a favorite leftist argument as something like “Everyone who agrees with us, agrees with us!” The village-banishment ritual, which here is Installment Three of Three, seems to me to wrap up an instance of this argument. “Now that I have made a point of banishing everyone who won’t buy this argument from the ‘village,’ or at least from my own consciousness, I can continue to state that everybody* agrees with my point of view on this thing!”

In Anno Domini Twenty Eleven, being a liberal has a lot to do with arriving at custom definitions of that word — “everybody.” The liberals won’t say so, but they use that to describe “everybody…within a certain periphery…that I’ve drawn.” If they were too forthcoming about that, they wouldn’t look too “liberal.” But let’s cut the crap. That’s what they mean.

The village-banishment maneuver also has a lot to do with disagreement sliding down a short, steep, icy slippery slope into rancor and dysfunction. Which we then blame on “discussing politics in the workplace/at the party/in the bar.” The blame for which is to be cast to both sides, equally.

But since the liberals are becoming enamored of the prerational village-banishment maneuver, and rather exuberantly at that, isn’t it past high time the blame went to them? I can’t think of a better way to turn a jocular, jovial, light-hearted, family-friendly, fun-for-kids social occasion into a hotbed of rancor, than to pretend to be ready to engage these issues in a friendly, civilized, mutually respectful way — and then, as a direct result of the strategy that has been selected and rehearsed ahead of time, fail to deliver on this.

It’s bad faith. Shouldn’t we treat it like that’s what it is?

Wall Street Journal:

A 2008 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, found that the highest-earning 10% of the U.S. population paid the largest share among 24 countries examined, even after adjusting for their relatively higher incomes. “Taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States,” the OECD study concluded.

Meanwhile, the percentage of U.S. households paying no federal income tax has been climbing, and reached 51% for 2009, according to a new analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation. That was the first time since at least 1992 that more than half of households owed no federal income tax, according to JCT estimates.; earlier data were unavailable on Monday.

Many who paid no federal income tax for 2009 are likely low-wage workers, students and the elderly, according to Democratic aides, as well as those whose incomes have been affected by the economic downturn. [emphasis mine]

Stealing this from somewhere, although I can’t recall where: We know those liberal democrats must really like poor people since their policies continue to make more of them!

Hat tip to Neal Boortz, who adds:

Are you following this? The OECD says that our tax system is the most progressive among 24 large economies studied —- yet our re-distributor in chief says that the rich really aren’t paying their fair share. They just need to pay more.

And when you have over one-half of the people in this country not paying any income taxes – and from that you can suppose that over one-half of eligible voters don’t pay income taxes – how easy is it for a politician to talk about raising taxes on the evil rich?

Exactly. Must be that steely spine that was responsible for taking down bin Laden. Really going out on a limb there, Holy Man.

Maybe we can stumble on some “science” or some scientific “research” that says an enabling, redistributive government is bad for the environment or something. Voting for more alms emits carbon.

You wouldn’t know it from reading the pages here at The Blog That Nobody Reads. But I do love a true bumper-sticker slogan, that actually would fit on a bumper sticker.

Rush…

CNN says Obama just got a point, a bump of one point in the polls. They’re clearly unhappy about this. There’s a Washington Post Pew poll out now. Now, get this. This is quite telling. Washington Post Pew poll out now that says Obama has had his approval for the way he handled terrorism boosted to an all-time high of 69%. Washington Post Pew poll, Obama, all-time high in approval of how he handles terrorism, 69%. So SEAL Team 6 will be ecstatic to hear that it all worked out, it was worth it. Weirdly, though, on the economy, Obama still sits at 40% approval, a career low. How is that possible? It’s because you can’t put Osama Bin Laden’s blood in your gas tank. It’s because you can’t take Osama Bin Laden’s turban to Walmart and exchange it for a box of crispies. But why is the media going crazy running all these polls? Wasn’t killing Osama a good thing? It was a bipartisan thing. Why are they running all these approval polls anyway? I thought this was simply the right thing to do, to kill Osama Bin Laden? Even if it didn’t help Obama in the polls, this was just the right thing to do. They’re still running all these questions, all this polling.

Let me ask it this way. When did we land on the moon? When did Neil Armstrong take the first step out there on the moon? Remember the year, Snerdley? That’s right, 1969. July, 1969. Who was president? Richard Nixon. Did the country celebrate Richard Nixon after the moon landing? They didn’t celebrate Nixon? They didn’t? We didn’t celebrate Nixon? But Nixon was in the White House when we landed on the moon. Why didn’t Nixon get the credit for it? ‘Cause it was JFK’s baby, right? It was JFK’s objective to put a man on the moon in the next decade. Well, the country came together on Sunday night over the takedown of Osama Bin Laden. The country instantly unified around that singular event. Now, the media wants everybody to think we unified around Obama. The White House thinks — they want us to think — we unified around Obama, do they not? That’s exactly what they want us to think. Even Obama last night — I felt bad for Ted Baxter. His show was interrupted. Fox cut away from The O’Reilly Factor last night to go to the White House to show Obama getting a standing ovation from members of the congressional leadership for unifying the country.
:
Every narcissist’s dream is to have the world agree with them and adore them but that’s not our dream here, that’s not what this unity is all about. No, the American dream concerns our families, our life goals, jobs, homes, those that still have them, our disposable income, those that still have that, and the liberty, those that still have that. I mean there’s really nothing to leverage here. The celebration over Osama’s assassination isn’t transferable to a domestic political agenda. But they’re trying. You see, the American people know what to celebrate. We did that. We know what not to celebrate, too. And that’s liberalism. We don’t do that no matter how it’s positioned. And asking us to set aside our principles as a means of showing unity is absurd. Transparently absurd, but that’s what they’re doing.

Oh my goodness! Was that racist of me?? I’ll make a note to lose some sleep over that one. I just can’t think of a more apt metaphor. And take my word for it…if the President was a white dude doing what He’s doing, I’d use the same one. I’m piqued in a very equal-opportunity way here.

Consider: No Way No How!

President Obama declared Wednesday that “you will not see bin Laden walking on this earth again” but said he would not release photos of the terrorist leader’s corpse as proof that he is dead.

“It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, as a propaganda tool,” Obama told CBS’ 60 Minutes in an interview to be broadcast Sunday. “You know, that’s not who we are. You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”

Got that? But then there’s…Yes We Can!

President Barack Obama is to release up to 2,000 photographs of alleged abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in a move which will reignite the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

The decision to make public the images sought in a legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union comes amid a political firestorm over alleged torture of detainees under President George W. Bush.

Some of the photographs, which will be released before May 28, are said to show American service personnel humiliating prisoners, according to officials.

The images relate to more than 400 separate cases involving alleged prisoner abuse between 2001 and 2005.

I admit my 8-ball analogy falls apart here a little bit, for “McCarthy”-ite reasons. If President Obama were merely a fickle flibbertigibbet who doesn’t know up from down, rather than an impassioned anti-American douchebag who paid way too close attention during the sermons of that bigoted asshole pastor of His, Jeremiah Wright, the laws of probability dictate that these decisions would promote American interests fifty percent of the time. The Magic-8 ball would respect this, I think. But with our Man-God-Boy-King President Holy Man, the laws of probability are not to be so appeased.

And so I object to the situation that, time after time, the decision made is opposed to the interests of the country over which He is supposed to be presiding…or “rule”-ing…or whatever. I object to the notion that there’s no rhyme or reason to them, and there’s no place for anybody to ask the questions looking for rhyme-or-reason in them; I object to the peeved attitude we’d get back if anyone did so ask.

But I object even more to this:

With respect to Afghanistan, Jennifer, I don’t think this is a matter of some datum of information that I’m waiting on. It’s a matter of making certain that when I send young men and women into war, and I devote billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money, that it’s making us safer, and that the strategies that are placed not just on the military side but also on the civilian side are coordinated and effective in our primary goal…

…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But did you catch that first part? No particular datum. President Smarty-Pants, President Knows-What’s-Up, will take just as long as He wants to eke out some answer while not awaiting any particular datum.

The decision will not necessarily be consistent with other decisions, prior or subsequent. So we know there is no methodology at work. None other than…whatever diminishes America. That part does seem consistent.

But there’s no methodology apart from that. No data being accumulated or even absorbed. Just President Think-A-Lot needs more time. The question that naturally arises is, in what way would a decision made after ten months, become meaningfully different from a decision made after nine? If there’s no datum? Well the question is not asked, and if ever it is, it means racist!

That is what really sticks in my craw. Obama will take just as long as He wants, and the 310 million or so people who share a country with Him are just supposed to pipe down, go about our meaningless lives, wait with baited breath while He announces that next month He just might announce when He will announce that He’s going to announce His decision. Just like shaking a Magic-8 ball and seeing what comes up. Except this one gets back to you on its own sweet time and you don’t get to shake it again.

Once again: It seems like a fitting situation for an emperor, or a king. It doesn’t fit a constitutional republic operating under a government designed with separation-of-powers in mind.

Update: I thought this was a masterful job of scribbling that Neal Boortz did yesterday. In fact, it captured my thoughts verbatim…as in, syllable for syllable. Until somewhere around ten hours ago.

I’m not exactly a fan of our current president. I feel that he’s dangerous to the cause of liberty, and I earnestly hope that every single day I’ll manage to say something – to put across one small point somewhere – that will cause someone out there who supports Obama to pause for a minute and to say to themselves “maybe, just maybe, there are some things about this man I haven’t considered.” In order for that to happen, listeners – whether friendly or unfriendly – have to believe that I’m trying to be honest with them. And just how will listeners believe I’m trying to be objective and honest if I am completely unable to give credit where credit is due, or if I have to grudgingly give credit laced with sarcasm. So you’re now going to see hear me (or see me) use a phrase I generally try to avoid. That phrase? President Barack Obama. When considering the operation that turned bin Laden into fish food Obama showed himself to be presidential. Maybe it’s early in this particular game, but I can’t think of one single area in this entire scenario where Obama comes in for any legitimate criticism. That may change tomorrow or next week as we learn more … but for now it’s “job well done, Mr. President.”

What happened ten hours ago? “Oh no, we can’t release pictures of the dead bin Laden because I’m a big ol’ pussy!”

Just…dis…gust…ing…

My theory as of now: No masterful plan for manipulating the masses. Just raw, ignorant narcissism. “They are my subjects, they must believe Me!”

The result: A net P.R. loss. Obama stood a better chance, such as it was, of winning re-election of 2012 earlier this weekend, before the first Black Hawk left for that compound, than He does now. This is not ugly just to right-wing zealots; it is creepy to classic “middle America” voters. Creepy and downright weird.

More of my wisdom, from Daphne’s place. Just a note I’d like filed away that, in its own way, is important I think…

There is one wrinkle in the fabric that I wish were explored in great detail. Barack Obama is famous for using the word “I” in His speeches very often, up to & past the point where it becomes self-parody. You would think that the few times such a person uses the word “we,” He really & truly does mean to activate and implement the concept of “we.” But that’s not the case here.

The option was put on the table to raze the compound to the ground with missiles but, from what they’re saying, President Obama immediately ruled this out because “we” had to have absolute, irrefutable proof that Osama bin Laden was eliminated, and not some imposter. This significantly elevated the risk to the troops engaged in the mission, as well as to the success of the mission itself.

We-ell, Mission Accomplished, as they say. Then what? The DNA test to make absolutely positively sure…the President makes His announcement…it seems at least one photograph was taken, and I would assume — hope — there were some meaningful remnants kept of this DNA testing process. And then whoosh. The body is treated according to Islamic tradition, “buried at sea,” with not even the name of the body of water disclosed, so it is absolutely impossible to build any kind of temple. Okay, as I said before I can see the logic in that.

B-u-u-u-t…

Here we are at end-game, and “we” didn’t have a single thing proven to “us.” Barack Obama made sure things were proven to Barack Obama for the benefit of Barack Obama.

For the record, I don’t think this will have a meaningful impact in this particular situation. Osama bin Laden is dead; I believe he was killed this last Sunday, as we were told. We’re going to get at least one gory photograph to support this, and I’m all-but-certain that there is, indeed, some useful remnant from this DNA process to accommodate an enlarged audience of neutral arbiters, should that need somehow arise.

It’s the mindset that irritates me. “No rockets because we need do make sure it’s really him” — fast foward to — “Okay, I am sure it’s him now I’ll make my announcement in a couple hours so go ahead and get that thing out of here.” So the corpus delicti is fish food before we even find out there is a corpus delicti because, well hey, what the hell do we need to know? Other than Obama Is Awesome.

(Video leads with thirty-second advertisement.)

“The rule of law is what separates us from the monsters.”

Update 5/24/11: A lately-published private paper from the desk of Victor Davis Hanson seems apropos:

The world must now realize that the domestic antiwar movement is dead, kaput; it cares not a whit whether we assassinate bin Laden or a son of Qaddafi or go into Libya. Everything is on the table now and there are no self-restraints, no snickers on The Daily Show, no quirky insider winks on Letterman, no Barbara Streisand crazy faxes. A Nobel peace laureate is now the Left’s totem and he can send quite deadly Americans on quite deadly missions as he sees fit — and without worry about a New York Times op-ed barrage or an ACLU lawsuit. That gives the US newfound advantages, a veritable blank check, from keeping Guantanamo open indefinitely to using a Cheney “assassination” team and valuable water-boarded intelligence wherever it wishes to.

Militant feminism took a hit, from which it has never recovered, when it sought a waiver from its own militancy for the benefit of President Clinton. People may overlook this, may choose to deny it, but this is only achieved by means of a derelict long-term memory. Two or three decades ago, if you were in a position of authority and the feminist movement came gunnin’ for you, you were gone — it was a when, not an if. You were history. That isn’t true anymore.

Militant anti-war advocacy is now in the same position, forced to seek a reprieve from its own militancy for the benefit of President Obama.

Militancy is like a windshield, or a soap bubble — it retains a certain structural strength until such time as there is a breach. It doesn’t work well with these breaches. But politics is ultimately all about breaches; give a little to get a little; half-a-loaf and go onward. And so these militant movements enjoy a working timespan in full vigor until there is a breach, then they deflate.

I’m very happy to see the anti-war movement deflate. But then, of course, there is Judge Napolitano’s concern from the video.

I’m not cool with the President noodling over His decision carefully, with His “dithering,” careful and meticulous as it might be, even if it took Him sixteen hours. Say what you want about George W. Bush, but that President had to make the case to somebody; to prove something to somebody.

Still happy bin Laden is dead. I still think about that scene from the Warner Brothers Batman movie — keep hearing Jack Nicholson’s voice in my head saying “You’re a vicious bastard, Rotelli, and I’m glad you’re dead!” But you know, it is possible to come to the correct decision following the wrong process. And when that happens, it can still be a problem. I believe it’s a problem here. And it will probably bite us in the butt down the road.

Vote here. It’s a pie chart that looks like Pac Man’s head, in mid-gulp with the mouth barely open. With the right side winning.

I’d like to know what the “no” people are thinking. Seems to be typical liberal stuff — I don’t want to see it, therefore they shouldn’t be in view anywhere. In other words, looking away is simply not an option. You know what they say…”If a conservative doesn’t like a radio station he turns the dial, if a liberal doesn’t like a radio station he wants it banned.”

Wall Street Journal is wondering if the Bush administration should get some credit for finding bin Laden so he could be killed. Over on FARK, there were 141 comments about fifteen minutes ago and as of this writing there are 377. Mmmm yes…FARK kids…I’m sure they’re going to weigh the evidence, evaluate both sides fairly and come to a reasoned decision on this.

More Hello Kitty of Blogging wisdom from Yours Truly:

If you can use time as an excuse for Obama, as in “He still needs time to fix” blah blah blah blah…then Bush gets to use the same excuse, as in “It took more than eight years to use OUR intelligence to bring down bin Laden.” Can’t have it both ways.

If this was fiction with no parallel with reality, I would have guessed the job of finding bin Laden and putting a slug between his eyes…at somewhere between two and three years. Pretty close to what it took President Obama’s administration. But it’s pretty clear He didn’t start from scratch, and it’s therefore pretty clear this is a much more involved and complicated task, full of false leads. My two-year guess would be exceptionally weak, I wouldn’t have put any “gonna feel that” money on it at all. None. I can see it taking a decade of steady, incremental progress.

Hey, timelines are hard. Sixty-some years from the maiden flight of a heavier-than-air vessel, to a successful moonshot, and then another forty years of not quite being able to get around to doing it again. A full decade to send bin Laden to meet Allah? I can certainly see it.

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, EIT for short, has been shown to be part of it — I don’t hear anyone, anywhere, in a position of knowledge, saying otherwise. Assassination, reprehensible in any form to the extremist left in America that forms Obama’s base, was undoubtedly a part of it. It’s a core piece of the official narrative. “Kill, not capture.”

No matter who you choose to believe, this ends up being just another revolution on the merry-go-round of “When liberals absolutely positively have to deliver results, they make their decisions the way conservatives do.”

Hey, that would be a decent slogan for 2012. Wonder how much intel we’d have on bin Laden if Al Gore was our President when the towers came down?

Update: Drudge is reporting Obama has decided to release one photo. Just heard the guys on the radio report on this as well.

If that is true, this means we are going to have conspiracy theories. It can’t go any other way. There are n photos, Obama has decided to release one, and n>1. And so there is going to be speculation about what is in the (n-1) photos.

Obama’s bump in the polls — and let’s be clear about this, it is well-deserved — is going to be over pretty soon, I think. If I were an Obama fan I’d be coming off it right about now. There will be conspiracy theories about the photos because Obama’s releasing only one, or a selected subset anyway. If Obama cannot see this coming, He’s an idiot. If He can, then He’s a manipulator. But also, there’s this “when and if they decide to release it” business. What they mean by that is when/if He decides to release it…

It all seems so imperious and imperial. This one guy, this Man-God-King guy, decides moment to moment how the public’s right to know is to be interpreted. Anyone who disagrees is called a racist.

You knew it was coming.

From Jawa, by way of Terri.

Okay now this is cool. You mean every time I write something that says Obama is a one-termer, His political life gets a new lease by means of a terrorist getting killed? Is that karma or something?

I can deal with that. Obama is a one-termer, Obama is a one termer, Obama is a dead duck, Obama’s gonna lose, Obama is a one termer.

Seriously, America’s worst President does deserve some credit on this. Still waiting for the details to come out, but that much does seem clear. At the very least, He deserves credit for not getting in the way when the military did what it’s supposed to do, just like with the Somali pirates getting skull-capped.

Now things get bizarre in lefty-land. President Obama delivered a speech carefully stripped bare, by which I mean right down to the bones, of any “Hoo-rah” stuff. No foam rubber finger with “We’re Number One” on it, no don’t you go fucking with the USA or we’ll get ya. Not a trace. It’s clear He was trying not to piss off the internationalists, the anti-patriots, the anti-exceptionalists.

But something funny happened. He got to “killed Osama bin Laden” and there was no euphemism. Went ahead & used the k-word, just like that.

This tells me we’re nearly unanimous in agreeing with my fringe-kooky outlook on capital punishment — at least, the essentials of it. That we’ve got these bad people living among us who, for one reason or another, aren’t capable of living among us and tossing their bad asses in a cell isn’t good enough. Obama delivered this weird speech, syllable by syllable, trying His darnedest not to piss off His base…then used the word “killed.”

There are no concerns that I’ve found, anywhere, about the World Community trembling in agitation and fear about those out-of-control Americans and who are we gonna come after next. I imagine that’s because Obama’s a lefty. Kind of an “Only Nixon Can Go To China” moment in reverse.

Another weird thing: From what I’m hearing, President Obama made His announcement last night once the DNA match confirmed the identity of the deceased, at which point said deceased was deceased “about a week.” (Update: This does not seem to be the case…) That would mean Osama met Allah sometime really close to Easter Sunday, which would be pretty cool…but it also means the sequence of events goes like this:

Which provides a further answer to what I was asking on Birth Certificate Day, “why release this document on April 27 of the third year of Obama’s term?” I say “further” because the answer to that question is compatible with the interests of President Obama…not to the interests of America. We already had that much. I’m still not sure how it helps the country to release that personal record on that particular date, but now it’s a little clearer why that decision was made.

(Update: Looks like some things will have to remain a mystery.)

Lefties are now bragging rather brazenly that Obama was in the Big Chair when Osama flatlined, and President Bush couldn’t get this done. We’ll see a lot more of this, and there’s a concern that it might change the result of the election. Could be. Why worry about that one today; America will vote the way it’ll vote, and whatever that is, that’s how it will go. But do I need to backpedal on my prediction? I don’t think so. You can’t win re-election presiding over a crappy economy.

In fact I have another prediction:

“What exactly did Barack Obama do to bring down bin Laden?” is going to net me the same blank stares I used to get when I asked “what exactly did Bill Clinton do to revive the economy?” To date, it looks like the most logical answer to that is “use George W. Bush’s idea of putting General Petraeus in charge of things.”

You’re getting an object lesson in how crappy leaders do their so-called “leading,” although anyone who’s ever had a crappy boss already knew about this. They sit, like scavengers, waiting for something to happen that doesn’t completely suck. Then they swoop in and claim credit. In the meantime, while things continue sucking, they change the subject or blame the predecessor. So you see it’s a very simple process…blame predecessor, change subject, blame predecessor, change subject, when something happens that doesn’t suck you claim credit. Then the next day you change the subject and blame the predecessor. It will be this way as long as it works, and this has always worked.

Update: Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

You spend three solid years explaining to me the evils involved in fruit, sugar, pastry, shortening, etc…then after all that one day you say “look, I made a cherry pie!” Of course I’m going to look at you funny. Any rational person would say “Okay, so you want credit for the pie…but you clearly have no idea what goes into one…or you think I don’t…or…that’s not a real pie.”

Assassination squads is bad. Aggressive action is bad, especially in a “sovereign nation.” Decisive action without years and years of “due process” based on presumption of innocence, with “he did it and he knew what he was doing but he might be clinically crazy” being defined as innocence…is bad. Guns is bad. Anytime good guys win and bad guys lose, there’s some way to make it bad.

And then Obama zoinks Osama and that’s supposed to be good.

I don’t know why liberal democrats continue to pretend to be supporting some kind of principle, as opposed to a nakedly partisan agenda. Oh wait — yeah, I do know now that I think about it. They’re accustomed to talking to people unwilling or unable to retain and process meaningful information.

Jeffrey Lord is writing in the American Spectator…

President Obama will not be re-elected. Period.

…very, very boldly, as you can see. Why’s he being so bold? What prompts him? Why does he think such heresy let alone scribble it down?

Let us read further:

Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like.

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20
February 28, 2011: $3.24
March 6, 2011: $3.34
April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there’s the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.
March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

You can stand on your soapbox and loftily intone “I don’t care Obama is awesome!” until you’re blue in the face. You can throw out all the platitudes you care to…Can’t Explain It There’s Just Something About Him…The Real Deal…Breath of Fresh Air.

But when you climb off that soapbox you need to go home, and to get home you need to buy gas. Economic realities set in.

WHAT SEEMS TO HAVE LEFT Obama strategists clueless is the fundamental historical fact that inflation comes slowly. Milk today, celery tomorrow, and gas almost every day. Then, too late, there’s a collective gasp of recognition by Americans walking around the grocery store that it’s no longer just the milk and the celery but the soup, the chicken, the hamburger and perhaps now critically — the Excedrin. Don’t forget the rent, either. The shock of realization dawns that somehow the patient — America — is suddenly in dire economic health and the only way out is a brutally painful form of political surgery.

But what about the swaggering and the smirking, the bigotry and the xenophobia, the — what did they call it? Jingoism, hyper-nationalism, extremist patriotism and exceptionalism. The Won was going to fix all that with a dose of much-needed humility and then we were going to be fashionable, followed by popular, around the world.

Popular hasn’t materialized. Fashionable seems to be fleeting. Humble is here, for sure…hard not to be humble when your President is bowing to everybody.

But you know what they say about humility. It’s expensive. How much humility can you afford?

Ah, but then there is the media. The media will keep Holy Man all propped up, net Him His 270 electoral votes just barely. It’s their job to tell everybody what to think after all!

Problem: After they’re done doing that — they need to buy gas too.

Obama’s a one-termer, because He hasn’t done anything that makes a second term worthy of consideration. Just give awesome speeches and make things cost more. I don’t need to double my budget for gas, to listen to awesome speeches, and neither do you. Just hit “record” and “play.”

Click for larger.

Many other journeys within the boundaries. The perimeter itself is formed by, I think if I’m recalling this right, three trips. That’s a little tricky, since as the perimeter is pushed outward some older trip loses its significance in favor of the newer one…

Some of these will be pushed outward very soon I think, if all goes right. Some others will be staying where they are for quite some time; they’re representing a frontier I’m not feeling too enthused about expanding. Low on the excitement and high on the sunburn, boredom, sore butt. People don’t realize, we have lots of farmland here. Depressingly, that’s what makes this “pedaling universe” as expansive as it is. Light on the hills.

Although I would point out in my defense that when you lose hills, you gain a whole lot in terms of wind. And by “gain” I mean lose. In mid-afternoon, sixty miles into it, your tenth hour in the saddle or thereabouts…well hey, that’s what makes beer taste good right?

Smitty (hat tip to Gerard) explains it:

Jobs are what matter. Product? Not so much. Thus, if the State of Illinois pays for signs with spelling errors, that isn’t a bug, that’s a feature! Workers and materials suppliers will be kept busy moving the location of the typo all around the sign. It’s all about jobs saved or created, man!
:
Full circle, then: this humble sign in Illinois, far from a sign of stupidity, is a harbinger of winning the future, full employment, and portion controlled servings.

Yeah, Progress: yeah!

I wish Smitty’s humor tidbit was as big a waste of time as your average Huffington Post article or Daily Show segment, which is to say I wish it was an exercise in “wouldn’t it be funny if this thing happened, how about you go off and pretend like it really did, since if you part company with reality in that particular way it helps my agenda.” Otherwise known as I Can See Russia From My House! humor.

Sadly, though, he’s nailed it. Among the things that have people shouting and yelling and calling each other racists, is a debate about Keynesian economics — this thing we call an “economy,” do we owe it to the activity involved in the churning-around of this other thing we call “money”? Or is it necessary to the long-term well-being of this thing called the “economy” that something of practical use be created where it did not exist before? Is it some kind of heresy to believe in the creation of wealth?

It’s a good discussion to have, I think…although my mind happens to be pretty much made up on it.

Somehow, though, the people who disagree with me don’t feel particularly motivated to list their reasons for disagreeing with me. It’s much more common for them to call their detractors racist. That would be desperation if they were doing it as a ploy to get ahold of capital to try out their “economic activity without wealth” schemes…but that isn’t what is happening here. They got ahold of the capital just fine, then they spent it, then the plan didn’t work and then they called people racists for noticing it didn’t work.

…run by a disgruntled delivery man.

“15 Percent is a blog documenting people, and companies who have never seemed to work in the service industry, or don’t think to tip at least 15% on deliveries, and instead opt for 2 dollars on everything,” the site says. “This is for all the people who have been handed $80 on a $78 order and told “keep the change”. Thanks a**-h***.”

The “<=15%" blog is here.

I guess he’s talking about me. I’ve never worked in a “service industry”…except I did work once in retail which I’m guessing is not what he’s talking about. Retail people don’t get tips, do they? I didn’t.

I do think it’s a good point to be made about delivery people. I tend to agonize much more about take-out. I drive over, she swipes my card, out comes a paper tape for me to sign and it’s got “gratuity” on it — I’m not even looking at my food yet and here I am filling the damn thing out. What’s the food gonna be like? Are they going to bollux it up? Lose track of the order and make me wait an extra twenty minutes? If I don’t know any of this, then why am I tipping?

You know what this guy’s problem is — at least, in my household. The check is made out before the guy ever shows up. See, tipping is supposed to be all about, “I appreciate that, you did everything I wanted or needed.” It makes sense. You value the service more than the money in the first place, right? Otherwise you would not have placed the order. So when the service commands special leverage in determining that the order was a good call, the message needs to be sent “make sure it goes that way from now on.” And y’know, just telling the guy that isn’t going to get the job done. Put your money where your mouth is, and it happens. Win-win.

In this way, a blog dedicated to bitching about tips below fifteen percent, misses the point. What kind of service did you render in order to net two dollars on a $78 order? Maybe the customer is trying to send you a message.

I’m old enough that I can’t give you an age when I started working, because I started in childhood, and people my age don’t consider that to be real “work.” Although if I tried to force my kid to do it today, California would squawk, the county would squawk, something about “child labor laws”…wouldn’t want to go back to the days of Oliver Twist, would we. But little kids don’t command a concept of time very well. They need to be given an incentive. That’s how tipping got started isn’t it? Boys selling newspapers, shining shoes, delivering hay bales, carrying luggage. I had the opportunity to earn tips, but I didn’t earn that many and I probably wouldn’t have tipped me if I was the customer. I wasn’t a very good paper boy. Had a rather thick skull when it came time to get the message through “move on my timeline and not yours, and this partnership will work for both of us.” Somehow I didn’t quite catch on.

But if I did, and some jackass failed to appreciate it monetarily, I wouldn’t have acted all abused about it. That’s not quite right. In fact, I’m doubting it is my natural biases that incline me to believe the following: A feeling of entitlement to the other man’s coinage, is a far bigger problem for our society today than some newspapers showing up late. Therefore, there is a line we should be trying not to cross; a line of entitlement.

Starting a blog about shitty tips, crosses the line. Why is this customer rounding up to $31.00 when the bill is $30.21? Maybe that’s a lack of education, in which case I’m all for the education. But ya know, I’m thinking there might be more to it than that. Did you talk to the customer and find out what’s going on?

I just do…

Flashback —

Regrettable statement. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like paying four dollars a gallon for gas.”

From here. Hat tip to Instapundit.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Obama” — Kenyan word that means “failed experiment.”

A royal wedding, and the long-awaited release of a document from Hawaii. The week certainly does finish up with a feeling of genuine accomplishment, doesn’t it?

I say, not so fast. If there is any positive development for the civilized world this week, it is that a problem gnawing away at all of us, invisibly, undetected, has been brought to the surface. It stares at us defiantly threatening to destroy us if we do not destroy it first — if, that is, we are willing to look at it.

I like to foster a spirit of optimism about these things. But there is no call for it here, none whatsoever. Consider what just happened:

Pompous ass Barack Obama, who occasionally pretends to preside over the United States, finally released the long form birth certificate that has been causing all this trouble. The certificate He has been using as an instrument of disunity to cause all this trouble…for no good reason whatsoever…purely for partisan, politically strategic purposes. He said “We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have more important things to do. I have more important things to do.” Then flew off to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show.

The New York Times says it shouldn’t have happened. We should have taken Obama’s word for it and it’s a national tragedy that some among us did not.

With sardonic resignation, President Obama, an eminently rational man, stared directly into political irrationality on Wednesday and released his birth certificate to history. More than halfway through his term, the president felt obliged to prove that he was a legitimate occupant of the Oval Office. It was a profoundly low and debasing moment in American political life.

The disbelief fairly dripped from Mr. Obama as he stood at the West Wing lectern. People are out of work, American soldiers are dying overseas and here were cameras to record him stating that he was born in a Hawaii hospital. It was particularly galling to us that it was in answer to a baseless attack with heavy racial undertones.

Mr. Obama practically begged the public to set aside these distractions, expressing hope that his gesture would end the “silliness” and allow a national debate about budget priorities. It won’t, of course.
:
It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious “other” would have been conducted against a white president.
:
Mr. Obama was tactically smart to release the certificate and marginalize those who continue to keep the matter alive. It is tragic that American politics is fueled by such poisonous fire. Mr. Trump quickly moved on to a new fixation, questioning Mr. Obama’s academic credentials. Mr. Boehner, and other party leaders, have a new reason to call a halt to the politics of paranoia and intolerance.

Now on the way to making my point, I ask that we just let this situation sit here while we go on to other things — other pompous asses. Forget about the Oprah point; the proves nothing except that our pompous ass of a President has a priority system that is all cocked up, or no priority system at all. Consider: Obama showed a document to make a controversy go away. Whether this is successful or not, the take-away is that we have some vocal critics who don’t think this should have been necessary and the feeling that it was, should be an embarrassment to those who asked for it and it represents some event of oppression against President Obama. With thick racial undertones. Or overtones.

President Obama should not have to prove things. That’s the take-away.

Pompous ass Robert Gibbs, who used to be the President’s Press Secretary, issued a challenge — a reminder, really — to pompous ass Donald Trump who is now claiming victory in the birth certficate matter: Where are the tax returns? The Donald said he’d release them if Pompous ass Obama would relent on the birth certificate question. Pompous ass trump pompously replied…

Asked later about Gibbs’ comments, Trump told POLITICO: “Gibbs is a loser.”

That’s an end, not a beginning. Go follow the link. If Trump said anything following the word “loser” it wasn’t anything worth including in the article. It was a brush-off.

Much as it amuses me to watch Gibbs get brushed off the way I’ve seen Gibbs brush off so many others — the man is a pompous ass, just like the other two, after all — I have to side with him on this one. Trump said he’d do X if the President did Y. Pompous ass Gibbs is just calling on pompous ass Trump to make good. But there’s a problem, see: Pompous ass Trump is above it. Just like pompous ass Obama was above releasing the damn birth certificate, or at least, the pompous asses at the New York Times thought He should’ve been.

Kate Middleton is marrying Prince William of Wales this morning. I’ve already given my thoughts on the inherent anti-Americanism of royal weddings, particularly this one. I hesitate to call this girl a pompous ass, from what I’ve seen of her she’s lovely, polite, well-mannered et al. Looks to me like the prince is getting a real prize. But I’ve had my fill of this:

Independent Woman: Kate Middleton Won’t ‘Obey’ Prince William

The future princess is reportedly following Diana’s footsteps in dropping the word from her wedding vows.

Diana broke from royal tradition and protocol when she left “obey” out of her vows to Prince Charles in 1981, and the decision caused much controversy. But befitting this royal wedding’s more modern tone, Middleton’s choice feels appropriate. She’ll promise to “love, comfort, honor and keep” her husband instead.

Give it a rest, you pompous asses. If Diana did the same thing, there is nothing ground-breaking here.

It isn’t that I want wives to “obey” their husbands, it’s that the entire fuss misses the point. Wives and husbands, at least on the big stuff, need to come to agreement on things. It really doesn’t matter if they do that by means of her obeying him or him obeying her, or a midnight round table, plates breaking, whatever. The problem is — and this was the problem back in Diana’s day, as well — there are a whole bunch of messages coming out of this “Kate won’t vow to obey” story.

I happen to agree that “obey” is antiquated, so in my view one of those messages might be called the right one. All the rest are bollywonkers though. And you just know the one message that is most popularly received, is that wives & husbands don’t need to agree on a damn thing. Followed closely by: Wives don’t need to obey husbands, husbands need to obey wives.

Because wives are above. This is the common feeling of female pompous asses.

Those of you still just starting to recover from the topic-change whiplash of a few paragraphs above, I think can now see the logical connection. Sad, pathetic, dissatisfied people — homely fat women who wish they had the nerve to rebel in some way against their husbands — are living vicariously through Kate Middleton. Just as sad sacks who wish they could tell someone to “take this job and shove it,” or something, are living vicariously through President Obama. Or Donald Trump. This ceremony of “I don’t owe you” spectacles is all about proxy living.

That’s the monster of which I speak. It threatens to destroy civilization.

The Last Son of Krypton, Man of Steel, Man of Tomorrow, Scion of the House of El, renounced his American citizenship or at least announced that he’ll renounce. What a pompous ass. Superman, you see, is tired of having his actions construed as maneuverings by the United States government, and so (from what I understand) he is taking this action to gift himself to the world as a “citizen of the universe.”

I’m somewhat sympathetic with this, actually, if only in the sense that yes this is probably what would happen. Superman flies off to Libya to help overthrow the evil government of Khadaffi, and the angry voices from around the world say…the United States, through its spy Superman, went and did this thing. I don’t agree with the solution but I can recognize the problem.

Before we get to that, though, a real-life Superman would run into the problems faced by The Incredibles, wouldn’t he? The liability. (“I saved your life!” “You ruined my death!”)

But the hyper-nationalism, the blame-America-first-ish-ness…let us call it “anti-patriotism”…that isn’t the biggest problem. It’s a problem, to be sure, but I see a bigger one: Superman being above the citizenship. See, there’s that word again. Pompous ass Superman is just too big to fit into a country.

The theme persists. We’ve got an awful lot of pompous asses being above things.

The problem is that western civilization is made possible by the opposite sentiment. What we have built runs on a foundation of “as a matter of fact, I do owe you something.” Or, “for value received, I am going to do X.” This permeating stench of a story, that some modern Ivanhoe or Perseus is just so super-duper wonderful that nobody should ask anything of him, is contradictory to the motor that has moved everything in any way that has ever helped us. Even the ancient Greeks, who inspired us in so many ways, believed in it. Twelve labors of Hercules and all that. Jason can’t have the Golden Fleece until he does X, says King Aeetes of Colchis. Jason doesn’t say “Omigaw! That’s so unfair!” Jason does the labors and then King Aeetes doesn’t say “Yeah but you’re a loser!”

Actually he does if you read the mythology. But that’s part of what makes him the villain.

Fast forward to 2011 Common Era and we see yesterday’s villain is today’s hero. We worship the pompous ass who can’t be counted on for anything because he thinks all this stuff is beneath him. The golf-playing trust fund baby jackass.

It implies something toxic about us that all these examples are crammed into one awful, odious, pompous-ass-filled week. Implies but doesn’t prove — it might all be a coincidence. But if it is, we should make the most of it. We have met the enemy and he is us; our tolerance for pompous asses who regard themselves as being above things…who insist that the rest of us also regard them as being above things…is our undoing. We are far too deferential to these pompous asses.

And they aren’t above jack squat. Not in America, at least. Maybe it’s time we reminded ourselves of this simple egalitarian fact of life, and then after we’re done doing that, we can clue the pompous asses in on it as well.

Civilization requires it.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel and Right Wing News.

Okay…it’s pretty hard this morning to find some news that doesn’t have to do with that damn birth certificate, so let’s just wind the whole thing up here.

Neal Boortz points to Glenn Reynolds’ round-up, which is pretty good.

My Hello Kitty of Blogging update, if I dare say so myself, offers a salient summary:

Document Drop Day Plus One: This is the hard part. It took Obama three years to provide His real birth certificate. The challenge to Obama fans is to take this, and make it look like there’s something wrong with the people who were asking to see it. Tall order. But they’re trying…oh, Lordy, they’re trying real hard.

They’re in a jam. Think about it: How do you say “you never should have asked to see this…uh…this piece of paper…right over here.” It’s taking the position of, you shouldn’t have insisted on this thing you wanted us to do — after our side caved. Now that we have caved and you’ve lost nothing, there’s something wrong with you that you kept insisting on this. How do you do that?

I think behind closed doors they’re protesting that very thing.

We know we’re not going to turn to stone, or cause the universe to supernova, just by looking at it. We looked at it yesterday. Just a boring piece of paper, and the question that pops up after you’re done looking at it is: What is someone thinking when He refuses to release it? Who does that?

At least one argument they could’ve used up until now, and in fact have used, has completely imploded: You stupid crazy racist birthers are insisting on seeing something that doesn’t exist! Destroyed in fire, shredded when the department went to electronic records, etc. Now we know that was a lie. The hunt for hard links is time-consuming, which is to be expected…maybe I’ll pick that up and maybe I won’t. It happened. Lots of Google histories and 404 links out there. Quite the Tidy Bowl operation that seems to have taken place since.

My favorite analogy is one of my own inventions: Two jackasses you unfortunately have as extended relatives, have gotten into an extended altercation in which one demands to see written proof of something from the other. See, generally you take a lot of emotion out of things by getting rid of the whole democrat/Republican thing and keeping everything else.

Your family gets together frequently because you live close together. You are the host for nearly all of these. Picnics, ball games, funeral wakes, bridal showers, whatever…these two idjits keep getting into the same tired old argument. Your furniture is getting broken.

First couple times it happens, you might take the attitude “C’mon uncle Jack, his word is good, you don’t need to see the piece of paper.”

Then it goes on into the third year.

And then you find out the other guy has the piece of paper. Furthermore, the reason he isn’t showing it to the other guy, is his position is the other guy should take his word for it — I’m-just-so-completely-wonderful-and-awesome. Anybody who doesn’t believe every little thing I say, has something wrong with him. So I’m going to convert this other guy, see. Force him to believe me by not showing him the piece of paper. Which I have.

We’re in our third year of this nonsense.

You’d have to conclude:

1. The guy with the piece of paper is responsible for the conflict.
2. This doesn’t have anything to do with facts. It’s about privilege.
3. The guy wanting to see the paper isn’t exactly vindicated…but this other guy who has the paper? It might be time to look into assisted living. The guy’s whacked.
4. You’d probably want to be reimbursed for broken furniture. And not on a 50/50 basis. The guy with the piece of paper should pay all of it.
5. And finally…Jesus Fucking Christ just show him the paper you asshole!

You know, it’s funny. At this point, the kindest thing you can say about Obama is that He can’t actually run anything, but He’s gifted at coming out on top in these conflicts and whether we knew it or not, that is what the country was voting for.

But then things like this happen, and you realize — waitaminnit, He doesn’t even have what it takes to come out on top. You can’t conclude Obama is good at something unless you started examining the situation with that bias firmly planted in your mind already.

He commands an emotional vibe when He appears before a crowd of people. He can do that much pretty well. But what is that, exactly?

In sustained factional conflicts like this one, He doesn’t emerge victorious any more often than the average guy. And, based on what I’m picking up on Document Drop Day Plus One…I don’t think He’s come out on top here. He’s got some people in His corner, true. But that’s bedrock for Obama.

I think He’s hurt badly. Ready for another analogy? You’re in the Donner party. After you’re done cannibalizing each other and you get rescued, during the helicopter ride home you find out one of your companions had a stash of chocolate and energy bars the whole time. That guy who’s been holding out on you then, somehow, has the job of sustaining some kind of “personal approval rating.” That’s Barack Obama.

You wanna be Barack Obama right now?

So that’s why He finally released His long form birth certificate…

U.S. economic growth slowed more than expected in the first quarter as higher food and gasoline prices dampened consumer spending, and sent a broad measure of inflation rising at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years.

Big debt, fast inflation. They go together like bacon and eggs…but what do I care? My god-king president was born in the USA! Yay!